Alan Zendell, June 17, 2025

It sounds like a character from a Tolkien novel, but it’s neither fantasy nor amusing. Over the next few days, it may be the fulcrum on which the future of the Middle East depends. Fordo is the principal underground nuclear facility being used by Iran to enrich uranium, which can have only one intended outcome: the development of nuclear warheads that would be used to destroy Israel.

That’s not speculation or hyperbole. It comes right from the mouth of Iran’s Supreme Leader. There’s plenty to fight about in the region, drinkable water, for one. But things like water, arable land, and natural resources can be discussed and negotiated. Whether or not Donald Trump is the master negotiator he claims to be, they are things he understands. What the world faces in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran is something very different.

It’s different for two reasons that cannot be overlooked. One is the obvious potential for a larger conflict that could include the whole region, and possibly the world. The other, is that the conflict is based on things that can’t be sensibly negotiated. When the United Nations declared Israel a sovereign state in 1948, all of its Arab neighbors immediately declared war on the fledgling state. While countries like Jordan and Egypt have found it in their interest to be at peace with Israel, since then, a state of war has continuously existed for seventy-seven years.

Why? Because of religious bigotry, the worst reason I can imagine to kill thousands of people and threaten nuclear annihilation. Lesson number one to take from this is that it’s time we grew up as a species. Our major religions evolved from fear, ignorance, and insecurity. Thousands of years ago, that may have made sense, but in today’s world, it’s insanity born of the immaturity of human beings in general.

Israel is a nation of bomb shelters. Every kibbutz has them. Every village, every high-rise apartment or office building, every school and hospital. Israelis have lived that way since 1948 simply because they and their neighbors, who outnumber them a hundred to one, cling to the absurd notion that their God is the only true one. I reject all of that, and at this moment in time the thousand-year war between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world has taken on an existential dimension. Religious wars reflect a deep psychosis in human development that we must outgrow.

I don’t have the answer to that any more than any world leader does, and the fact that religious hatred appears to be unassailable limits our options. Every American president since Harry Truman has tackled it, and despite some successes with countries that have a more secular view of life, they have all failed. Today, we have a president who is quixotic and unpredictable, whose only real talents appear to be a negative 1 / 1 1 charisma and a willingness to enrich himself in defiance of every moral and ethical standard of behavior up against a rabid, extremist leader who believes more in Jihad than peaceful coexistence. The very notion of a holy war is insane. The idea of a supreme being who demands blood sacrifices of such magnitude ought to be enough to convince us to change our ways, but alas, we live in the real world.

The line in the sand we cannot cross is allowing a radical Islamic regime hell-bent on the destroying its neighbors from ever having a nuclear weapon. The entire world agrees except for Iran’s clients. Russia and China are silent on the matter, which tells us in the clearest possible terms that they don’t want the current incarnation of Iran to have one, either.

There are only two ways out of this without killing millions of people. Either Trump authorizes the use of the 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs and the lends Israel the aircraft capable of delivering them, or Iran agrees to dismantle Fordo under UN supervision. There is no other  option. Israel believes its existence is at stake, and Israel already possesses nuclear weapons. If they were pushed to brink and saw no other alternative to saving their people, do you think they would hesitate to use them?

The key player in all this is Donald Trump. He craved power, lusted over the idea of being the most powerful man in the world. His narcissism-driven fantasy has run into reality, however. Wielding more power than anyone else doesn’t mean he can control what other heads of state do. I’ve not been shy about my lack of confidence in Trump, and I believe he is the worst possible person we can trust to get this right, unless – is it possible he can grow into the job the way Lyndon Johnson did?

Can Trump make the right decision? There are a lot of concerns that he’s physically not up to the job anymore. We can only hope he proves us wrong.