“Unconditional surrender,” Donald Trump posted on Truth Social late on 17 June. He was apparently referring to what he demanded from Iran. He also ordered Tehran’s inhabitants to evacuate the city and stated that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was in America’s crosshairs, but would not be killed—for the moment. These posts appear to indicate that Trump had decided that the United States would join Israel’s war against Iran—and not just in Israel’s defence but on the offensive, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been urging these past weeks. Over the past two days, Washington has been moving combat aircraft, along with two dozen air-refuelling tankers and two aircraft-carrier task forces, toward the Middle East.

Israel is clearly winning the war against Iran, having attained air supremacy over western Iran and greater Tehran, and is bombing selected targets at will, unhampered by the Iranian air defences, which have been thoroughly suppressed—though Israeli pilots must still exercise caution as presumably, Iran will try to smuggle new SAM batteries back into the “cleansed” area.

But it may still prove difficult for Israel to achieve its main war aim: the complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons project, which Jerusalem regards as an existential threat, given the fact that the Islamic Republic has been issuing continual threats to destroy the Jewish state for decades now. For its own safety, Israel feels it must demolish all Iran’s major nuclear plants. The Jewish state has already destroyed Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, with its 15,000 centrifuges, as well as other nuclear sites, such as the separation plant at Isfahan.

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But demolishing Iran’s smaller, second enrichment plant, at Fordow outside Qom, is beyond the IAF’s conventional capabilities. That could only be done using American GBU-57 A/B MOPs (Guided Bomb Unit 57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators), which need to be delivered by B-2 or B-52 bombers, which only the US possesses. These American bunker-busters are the only weapons capable of reaching Fordow’s main centrifuge hall, 100 metres below ground, and destroying it—so for this, Israel requires the help of the US.