Clay
Shaping the Nuclear Future
Clay
Shaping the Nuclear Future
By Elie Nammour
“Each and everyone’s action models the future,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio observed, describing our current moment as a new world order where individuals and nations alike must determine what shape it will take. Call it the Clay—malleable, form-able, waiting to be molded by decisive action. Following our recent analysis on strategic clarity, new intelligence reveals Iran hardening nuclear sites with decoy shafts and dispersal tactics learned from US’s Midnight Hammer operation and the 12-day June War. The diplomatic track continues—dual talks scheduled for Tuesday, February 17th in Geneva with both Russia-Ukraine and Iranian delegations separately. But these with Iran are talks for talks, the prelude to the strike that will open the next phase of trilateral nuclear negotiations.
The window between the USS Ford carrier group’s passage through Gibraltar and Purim is closing. Almost a month since the February 6th Oman talks, and trust remains absent. The mullahs need the bomb as their ultimate survival tool and recognize this as their final battle. As Senator Lindsey Graham warned at the Munich Security Conference: “Losing this battle for the West will have vast effects for generational futures.” Time matters, but success depends on executing a dual track—accurate defense against massive retaliation and managing regime collapse.
The Theater of Diplomacy
Geneva on February 17th will host parallel negotiations—one track pursuing European peace through Ukrainian territorial concessions on Donbas, the other seeking some Iranian compromise on nuclear enrichment. Both are diplomatic performances for domestic audiences and international observers. Neither will produce breakthrough agreements because the fundamental positions remain unchanged.
Tehran’s recent actions demonstrate this clearly. Intelligence reports confirm Iran is actively hardening nuclear facilities, constructing decoy shafts to confuse targeting, and dispersing enrichment operations to multiple sites and parallel tunnels. These are not the preparations of a regime planning to negotiate away its nuclear program. These are the defensive measures of a government expecting military strikes and determined to preserve weapons capability despite them.
The Geneva talks serve a different purpose: establishing diplomatic record showing good-faith negotiation attempts before kinetic action. When Tomahawks launch and B-2 stealth bombers strike enrichment facilities, Washington will point to the diplomatic process, demonstrating that force became necessary only after exhausting alternatives. This matters for alliance management—keeping European partners aligned despite their discomfort with military action, maintaining Gulf state cooperation despite their economic anxieties, and justifying operations to a domestic American audience.
The Military Reality: Dual Track Operations
Military preparations reveal the actual timeline. The USS Ford carrier strike group received orders to extend its deployment cycle and transit to the Mediterranean. At full speed, Gibraltar to Eastern Mediterranean takes approximately 7.5 days. The carrier is currently sailing in communications blackout—position unknown—but the operational window is clear: between Gibraltar passage and Purim.
Expectations for Iranian retaliation are sobering. Many missiles will hit Israel despite enhanced defensive systems. This reality forces a bifurcated operational approach: strike Iranian command and control nodes to derail the regime while simultaneously preparing for its collapse and managing collateral damage across the region.
Additional military defenses continue deploying to Israel and regional US bases—Patriot batteries, THAAD systems, Aegis-equipped destroyers creating layered missile defense. Offensive capabilities likewise increase: additional F-35 squadrons, Bombers positioned for rapid strike, special operations forces pre-positioned for potential regime collapse scenarios. The build-up is comprehensive because the mission encompasses both destruction and collapse management.
The strike package will be devastating and precise along phases. First-hour Tomahawk salvos targeting fixed command and control nodes and air defense systems. F-22 and F-35 fighters establishing air superiority within hours through elimination of Iranian air force and surface-to-air missile sites. B-2 stealth bombers and B-52s delivering bunker-penetrating munitions against hardened nuclear facilities, targeting not just known sites but also decoy shafts and dispersed operations. Kinetics will apply an innovative dual carrier synergy,
Regional Reverberations: Lebanon’s Reckoning
This historic moment of change will reverberate beyond Iran itself. Lebanon will experience impacts far exceeding the fall of Assad’s Syria. Hezbollah’s entire strategic architecture depends on Iranian financial support, weapons supplies, and ideological backing. Remove the Tehran regime, and Hezbollah transforms from a state-within-a-state into an armed faction without external lifeline.
Lebanon’s fragile sectarian balance will face immediate stress. Hezbollah will attempt to maintain relevance through its domestic arsenal and political structures, but without Iranian backing, internal contradictions become unsustainable. Lebanese communities will press for reconfiguration of Lebanese power-sharing arrangements. The Lebanese Armed Forces may finally possess space to assert state sovereignty over all national territory.
This transition will be chaotic and potentially violent, but it creates opportunity for genuine Lebanese sovereignty for the first time in decades of state failure and pathological corruption. Mediterranean peace arrangements between Israel and Lebanon, previously impossible due to Hezbollah’s veto power, become achievable. Regional reconstruction can proceed with Lebanese participation as an independent actor rather than Iranian proxy subjected to gangs trafficking of all kinds .
The Path to Trilateral Arms Control
The Iranian strike serves larger strategic purposes beyond regime change in Tehran. It demonstrates American capability and will to both Russia and China, establishing credibility for the next phase: trilateral nuclear arms control negotiations.
For Moscow, the message is unmistakable. If Washington can neutralize Iran’s hardened nuclear facilities and manage the aftermath—simultaneously handling Venezuelan regime change and pressuring Ukraine on Donbas—then Russian calculations about American resolve require revision. The European off-ramp becomes more attractive when accompanied by demonstration of overwhelming military capability and sophisticated post-conflict governance.
For Beijing, the implications are equally clear. China’s military modernization and Taiwan invasion planning assume American strategic exhaustion and alliance fragmentation. Successful Iranian operations—precise strikes, effective missile defense, managed regional transition—demonstrate that American power projection capabilities remain formidable and alliance structures hold under pressure.
This sets conditions for President Trump’s April visit to Beijing. The conversation will not be supplication or negotiation from weakness. It will be great power dialogue from demonstrated strength: delay Taiwan action, accept peripheral territorial compromises (perhaps Kinmen or Matsu under novel arrangements), and join a trilateral nuclear framework stabilizing the multi-polar order.
The trilateral agreement—United States, Russia, China—represents the ultimate prize. Strategic arms limitations, verification regimes, minor spheres of influence recognition, crisis communication protocols. Such an agreement cannot emerge from current conditions of mutual suspicion and ongoing conflicts. It requires demonstration that the alternative—continued competition spiraling toward potential conflict—carries unacceptable risks.
Molding the Clay
Rubio’s metaphor is apt. We live in a new world order still taking shape—clay that can be molded through decisive action or allowed to harden into unpredictable forms through inaction. Each decision, each military deployment, each diplomatic engagement shapes what comes next.
The Geneva talks on February 17th are part of this molding process, but not in the way diplomatic optimists imagine. They establish record and provide cover for what follows. The real shaping occurs through force—the Iranian strike package, the subsequent regime collapse management, the demonstration to Moscow and Beijing that American power includes both destruction and construction.
Senator Graham’s warning about generational consequences is accurate but incomplete. Yes, failure in this moment would have vast effects—emboldening adversaries, fracturing alliances, accelerating nuclear proliferation. But success also carries generational implications: a trilateral framework constraining great power competition, regional orders stabilized through demonstrated capability rather than endless negotiation, and a multi-polar world governed by clear rules rather than descending into chaos.
The window remains open but is closing. The USS Ford transits toward operational position. Additional defensive and offensive systems deploy. Intelligence continues tracking Iranian dispersal and hardening efforts. Geneva talks proceed on schedule, serving their purpose as diplomatic prelude.
And then, between Gibraltar and Purim, the clay will be molded through fire and steel. The strike will come—not as failure of diplomacy but as its logical conclusion, not as abandonment of world order but as violent reassertion of stability through strength.
What emerges afterward—the post-Iranian regional arrangement, the European settlement, the Indo-Pacific equilibrium, the trilateral nuclear framework—will determine the shape of international relations for decades. The clay is malleable now. Actions in the coming weeks will harden it into lasting form.
The question is not whether the strike will occur. The question is whether American leadership masters the strategic vision and operational excellence to manage what follows—to shape the clay deliberately rather than allowing it to harden by chance. The world watches. The window closes. And history waits to see what form of a new order will emerge.