Following the Iranian revolution that created the present regime in 1979, Iran found itself in possession of much of the infrastructure that formed the basis of its nuclear weapons program. In 1974, the Shah announced his intention to "produce roughly 23,000 megawatts of electrical power from a series of nuclear power stations within 20 years," according to a history of Iran's nuclear program compiled by Iran Watch.
The U.S., the French, and several other Western European countries, eager to get in the Shah's good graces and keep the oil flowing, supplied the Iranians with a lot of what they needed to jump-start a nuclear program.
The Germans built two reactors at Bushehr, and the French supplied two additional, smaller reactors. By 1979, Iran had invested $1 billion in an enrichment plant and had begun to master the nuclear fuel cycle of enriching uranium into a usable fuel for reactors.
By the early 1990s, Russia and China (with North Korean technicians) were accelerating Iran's bomb development. Everything was going well for Iran and it was on track to possess a nuclear weapon sometime in the early 2000s.
The 9/11 attacks on America changed that. George W. Bush showed America's resolve to do battle with terrorist-supporting states in Iraq, and the Muslim fanatics in Iran decided to hold off on production of a weapon. However, research into enrichment, bomb design, and other related issues that were necessary to build a weapon of mass destruction continued.
While the CIA was telling presidents that the Iranians had stopped trying to build a bomb in 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, work continued on a bomb until the window to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon closed.
Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities was more than 40 years in the making and represents a generational failure of leadership of historic proportions. Each president in turn—beginning with George H. W. Bush, through Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, the first Trump administration, and Joe Biden—acknowledged the Iranian threat of a nuclear weapon but refused to act on it.
Sanctions were easily evaded. Isolating Iran played into the mullahs' "us against the world" propaganda. Forty years of useless statecraft have brought us to this inflection point.
Anyone who doesn't think Iran was on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon has been asleep for forty years. They very well may already have all the parts of a weapon that only need to be assembled for them to be a nuclear-armed nation.
The signs indicating Iran's intention have been there for anyone to see. George W. Bush almost ordered a strike on Iran's underground nuclear facilities in 2008, ultimately rejecting Israel's pleas to bomb Natanz, which, at the time, was the only nuclear enrichment site in Iran. Dozens of stories prior to Bush ultimately rejecting the idea of a strike claimed Bush was going to bomb Iran because Vice President Dick Cheney wanted it. Crazy times.
The hysteria on the left at the prospect of Bush attacking Iran was ironic. Bush was actually working to prevent Israel from hitting Natanz and other Iranian nuclear sites. The president didn't want to risk setting off a wider war in the Middle East. Getting rid of the Iranian enrichment program in one fell swoop had never been more realistic. Bush failed to act.
Getting Barack Obama to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities was a hopeless cause. If he wasn't actively encouraging Iran to build a nuclear weapon, he certainly didn't do much to stop it. The nuclear agreement Obama engineered allowed Iran to improve the efficiency of its centrifuges and gave Iran permission to construct up to 5,000 of the machines. The stupidity of this agreement was evident when Iran began interpreting the deal far differently than the original agreement called for.
Trump correctly interpreted Iran's intentions during his first term. Whether he would have gone after Iran's nuclear program in a second term will never be known. The fact that he's finishing a job that Joe Biden should have done is an indication that Trump had no illusions about Iran's capability or intent to build a nuclear bomb.
Apologists for previous presidents will point out that the Iranian threat was not an "existential" one at the time. They were kicking the can down the road, hoping a successor would do what they were unwilling to do.
Trump is now doing that. The strikes carry their own risks, including the possibility that attempts to limit the war may ultimately prove futile. But it's a gamble that absolutely had to be made.
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