Even without knowing exactly what the U.S. military mission named “Operation Midnight Hammer” did to the underground Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump and Republicans are triumphantly spiking the ball in the end zone: “total obliteration,” “effectively destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.”
For them, there is no fog of war, no unknown unknowns and only 20/20 clarity into the bomb damage. The American people could understandably conclude from these euphoric assessments that Operation Midnight Hammer was “one and done.”
But wars don’t work that way — ask Vladimir Putin, who expected to be in Kyiv more than three years ago. Or consider an Allied bombing raid in World War II that was called “Operation Hydra.”
In early 1943, Allied intelligence confirmed that Nazi Germany was developing Vergeltungswaffen, “vengeance” weapons, including the V-2 long-range rocket, at Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea. The Hydra plan to destroy Peenemünde was as skillfully conceived and executed as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On the night of Aug. 17 to 18, 600 British bombers approached Peenemünde in bright moonlight, the better for accuracy. Similar to Midnight Hammer, Hydra involved a diversionary air operation which, by the time the bombers neared the target, had drawn away German fighter planes. The heaviest German antiaircraft defenses had been previously withdrawn from Peenemünde on Hitler’s orders. Conditions were ideal.
The British bombers dropped 3 million pounds of explosives on Peenemünde — nearly eight times the explosives dropped by the B-2 bombers on Iran’s nuclear sites — plus huge quantities of incendiary bombs. The rocket site, whose below-surface facilities were not remotely as deep as the Fordo site in Iran, was enveloped in a sea of flames. Hundreds of people, including key German rocket engineers, were killed. The next day, the American Eighth Air Force followed up with another bombing of Peenemünde.
Newspaper headlines reported that Peenemünde had been “blasted,” that the “most extensive damage” had been done and that a large number of highly skilled, “irreplaceable” workers had been killed.
In fact, Germany ad anticipated an attack and had moved the most vital equipment and the production drawings to another location. Even though Hydra was a devastating raid, research and development resumed within months at Peenemünde. In 1944, despite more Allied raids on the rocket site, thousands of V-2s began raining down on Allied cities, killing almost 3,000 people in London alone.
Propeller engine bombers are hardly in the same league as the B-2, and World War II was a vastly different war than the American-Israeli conflict with Iran. But Operation Hydra illustrated how Nazi Germany, even as it was losing the war, successfully marshaled its resources and ingenuity to develop, shield from bombers and ultimately deploy a devastating weapon.
Iran is suspected of having moved its highly enriched uranium away from the targeted nuclear facilities, and the head of the U.N.’s nuclear monitoring agency recently suggested that Iran could resume enrichment in months.
Vali Nasr, one of America’s foremost scholars of Iranian politics, pointed out that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been waging a patient, long-term struggle against the U.S. — he is not about to capitulate, because he believes Iran is fighting for survival. With whatever enriched uranium and nuclear facilities survived, he may seek to acquire a nuclear weapon. The Iranian playbook appears to follow the Taliban adage that the Americans “may have the watches, but we’ve got the time.”
This is the Middle East, where it is never “one and done.”
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”
