The Letter
On March 7, in an interview with Fox News, President Trump said he had written a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. In the letter, he set a two-month deadline for the United States and Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
President Trump used his usual approach. “There’s an easy way and a hard way, and I hope we don’t have to go the hard way because I love the Iranian people.”
The letter did not specify whether the two-month clock started ticking from the time the letter was posted or the time the negotiations started. This is classic President Trump. He leaves some wiggle room.
However, in the interview, the president said, “The time is coming up. Something’s going to happen one way or the other… if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing – for them.”
Iran’s Nuclear Capability
I have written about Iran’s nuclear capability before. Specifically, in Iran’s Fattah-2 and Katie can Nuke Tel Aviv, I wrote that Iran probably has 4 – 6 gun-type nuclear bombs. These simple bombs do not require testing (compared to the implosion-type, which is far more complex).
That is my opinion, based on the fact that US officials have been stating that Iran is two weeks away from building a bomb for over a decade. That, and the difference in complexity between gun-type bombs and implosion bombs. In all that time, do we not think Iran could have enriched Uranium to weapons grade and hidden it in its many underground fortresses? Do we think they are incapable of cheating? They have the centrifuges and the metallurgical ability to work with Uranium metal. They have the missile technology to launch a 15-kiloton warhead at least a thousand miles.
It’s trivial for an engineer to mount a gun-type bomb onto a missile warhead and rig a barometric pressure switch or radar altimeter trigger. Probably both, so there’s a backup. Bottom line – Iran has the pieces. It’s likely they have missiles ready for launch.
I emphasize that this is my opinion. But other technically competent professionals agree, though we are a minority.
The administration spokesmen say Iran is two weeks away. Like they said back in October 2024. Like they said in 2018, when President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA.
Okay, let’s say there’s a twenty percent probability they’re ready to launch and an eighty percent probability they’re still two weeks away. President Trump’s deadline is two months.
This is not good.
Iran’s Nuclear Capability is Buried Underground
Forget about invading Iran. It will not happen. Israel has no ability to project what little ground force it has. The United States can do it with a big stretch. Sustaining ground action will be a nightmare, even if we stage out of Iraq. When we get there, the conventional combat will cost us massive casualties. Ask the Iraqis what the Iran-Iraq war was like. Is the American public ready to greet thousands of American men and women flown into Dover?
Israel has been making a lot of noise about striking Iran’s nuclear capability. And it wants the US to go in with them. Can conventional airpower alone take out Iran’s nukes? All of them? Before Iran lets fly with the 4 – 6 gun-type bombs, it has a twenty percent probability of having them ready to launch.
Maybe, if we’re willing to take the chance. Those nukes won’t take out Washington or New York. They’ll take out Tel Aviv and Haifa. Israel seems willing to take the risk.
But we’re not certain to get them all.
Let’s be clear. Iran’s nuclear capability is buried underground. That doesn’t mean it’s ten stories under the desert floor in hardened concrete. They do have those facilities, and that would be bad enough. No, they’ve got them in caves deep inside mountains a few thousand feet high. You think Iran’s all desert? They have ski resorts in Iran. In the Alborz and Zagros mountain ranges. Fifteen thousand feet high. Yes. Skiing.
You can forget about bunker busters. You can forget about MOABs. Those are not going to cut it.
President Trump has only One Realistic Option
And he knows it.
Let’s assume we have perfect intel on the location of all the facilities (including the launch silos for any nuclear-armed missiles). We have to go in with nukes. I believe US administrations have always known this. They don’t like to talk about it because the consequences are almost incalculable.
For years, whenever this subject comes up, we listen to the talking heads flap their gums about airstrikes. They talk about conventional airstrikes. And they trot out the retired generals who all say we have to do it when they know darn well our conventional bunker busters don’t have a prayer of doing the job. They assume it’ll be another conventional war to fatten up the MIC. The BS piles up so fast that you need wings to stay above it.
So let’s get real. If we take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities with a nuclear first strike (the only way to do it), what happens if we leave their thousands of conventional missiles intact? They will certainly launch on Israel. They certainly have a dead man’s trigger with local commanders authorized to launch if they lose contact with HQ or Tehran. They proved last year that their missiles can penetrate Israel’s best air defense. I’ve written extensively on that topic in Iran missile attack overwhelms Israeli air defense, and (somewhat more quantitatively), in How to defeat an Iranian Missile Swarm.
That means if we nuke Iran’s nukes, we have to take out their conventional missile capability at the same time. We cannot afford to allow them to launch on Israel.
Iran’s conventional missiles are also located underground in “missile cities,” impervious to conventional bunker busters. I wrote about these in the article, Israel Fails to Strike Iran’s Underground Missile Cities.
That means we have to nuke their conventional capability as well.
Should we nuke their command and control? Should we nuke Tehran?
We would certainly draw the line at nuking Tehran. We can hit their senior leadership with precision conventional strikes. The Israelis are pretty good at that.
The rest of Iran has to be turned into a softly glowing radioactive landscape.
The W76-2 Low-Yield Warhead and UGM-133 SLBM
The W76-2 is the low-yield warhead developed for the UGM-133 Trident II Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (Trident II D5). It was first deployed in 2019 (the last time President Trump grappled with the issue of Iran’s nuclear capability). It has a blast yield of 6 – 8 kilotons compared to the 475 kiloton W88 and the 90 kiloton W72-1 (see Figure 3).
There was considerable debate about the need for a low-yield nuclear warhead. The argument usually came down to Russia building more tactical nuclear weapons. It was something of an argument based on terminology, in part because Russia categorizes its nuclear weapons by treaty rather than yield. Simply put, strategic weapons are limited by treaty (e.g. START, which expires in February of 2026), non-strategic weapons are not. We categorize weapons by yield. So we have 500-kiloton weapons, 1-megaton weapons, and 1-kiloton weapons. The high-yield weapons are “strategic,” and the low-yield weapons are “tactical.” Russia can have a 100-kiloton strategic weapon (on a platform subject to the treaty) and a 100-kiloton non-strategic weapon (on a platform not subject to the treaty). So when President Putin says he is ordering Russia’s Non-Strategic Nuclear Forces to high alert for drills, do not assume he’s talking only about low-yield nukes. His non-strategic missiles can deliver high-yield nukes and strike our cities.
We quibble. The point is, Russia was building more lower-yield non-strategic weapons, so we argued we should too.
But why would we mount low-yield warheads on SLBMs which would be subject to the treaty? It appears to be a waste of SSBN missile capacity. The Russians would consider these to be strategic weapons of impossibly low yield.
Honestly – why mount an 8-kiloton warhead on a Trident II D5?
Maybe… Russia isn’t the target. Never was.
The Trident II D5, with a CEP of 100 meters, is ideally suited to deliver low-yield nuclear weapons against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. Crucially, it does not need to be delivered by aircraft that are vulnerable to Iran’s highly capable air defense.
A subtle distinction – if we use salvos of Trident II D5s with 8-kiloton W76-2s to annihilate Iran’s nuclear capability and conventional missiles, we’re not talking about tactical nukes. We’re talking about a strategic strike.
Conclusion
It is highly likely that President Trump believes that Iran is on the cusp of crossing the nuclear threshold, if it has not already done so. In a sense, he is picking up where he left off in 2020, but with a greater sense of urgency.
The collapse of Syria, and Israel’s success against Hezbollah and Hamas, is putting pressure on Iran to cross the threshold. Benjamin Netanyahu’s bellicose rhetoric is adding to that pressure. Nor is it mere rhetoric. Israel has the capability to launch airstrikes on Iran, and the US has just delivered a large inventory of conventional bunker busters to the IAF.
But the decisive strike will be delivered by America’s Trident IIs and W72-2s.
I do not think President Trump is bluffing; he takes the Iranian threat too seriously. He spoke with President Putin about Iran on their last telephone call. I believe his ultimatum to the Iranians is real. If Iran bends and enters negotiations, Russia will help mediate an agreement because Russia is an Iranian ally and does not want Iran to go nuclear, either. It is possible Iran will agree to terminate its nuclear program if Russia takes it under its own nuclear umbrella.
If Iran does not come to the table and strike a deal within two months, we may see the first use of nuclear weapons since World War II.
My bet? Iran folds under President Trump’s pressure. Russia mediates a nuclear deal with Iran. President Trump gets a big win. Israel can go back to focusing on Gaza and the West Bank, which is what they need to be focusing on.
About the Author
You may reach Cameron at: cameron.curtis545@gmail.com
Cameron Curtis has spent thirty years in the financial markets as a trader and risk manager. He was on the trade floor when Saddam’s tanks rolled into Kuwait, when the air wars opened over Baghdad and Belgrade, and when the financial crisis swallowed the world. He’s studied military affairs and warfare all his adult life. His popular Breed series of military adventure thrillers are admired for combining deep expertise with propulsive action. The premises are realistic, the stories adrenaline-fueled and emotionally engaging.
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