JOHNSON COUNTY, Mo. – The enforcer of President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran rests in between combat missions at aircraft hangars in the Show-Me State.
Mr. Obama has championed the agreement as one of his top foreign policy accomplishments. Leaders of both parties in the United States and leaders abroad doubt the deal will keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The treatise gives Iran much-desired relief from crippling economic sanctions imposed by the west. It is designed to give the U.S. and its allies (P5+1) the peace they seek in the Middle East.
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., told KOLR10News he does not trust Iran because the country is the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism by the Obama administration’s own account.
“I think the agreement almost guarantees that they will develop nuclear weapons,” Blunt said.
The nuclear agreement requires Iran to destroy centrifuges to the point where the country’s “breakout time” would be 12 months. The breakout period is the time experts believe Iran would need to develop a weapon under the accord.
“All they have to do to actually comply with the agreement is say we’re starting the 12 month clock,” Blunt said. “The neighbors will believe the Iranians are cheating and they will want to have a weapon quicker than Iran will have a weapon.”
Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S. has the capability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
Carter was speaking in a code of sorts about a bunker buster weapon named the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or “MOP.”
The 15-ton weapon is the world’s largest non-nuclear bomb. The Pentagon has spent nearly $400 million to prepare it to hit nuclear facilities buried hundreds of feet within Iran’s mountainous terrain.
If the U.S. ever needed to deploy this weapon, only one aircraft is capable of deploying it in combat.
The Northrup Grumman B-2 Spirit, which takes off from mid-Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force Base, is a nearly $2 billion aircraft.
“The number one characteristic of course of the B-2 is the stealth characteristics, making it capable of getting to areas where other aircraft can’t get to undetected,” said 509th Bomb Squadron Pilot Major Tim Sutton.
Stealth technology has set the U.S. apart from its enemies for decades, but the B-2 is also unique because it was one of the first to deploy weapons with GPS technology.
“The MOP has GPS capability and it is quite precise,” Sutton said.
Boeing’s Phantom Works, headquartered in St. Louis won government contracts for most of the development of the weapon.
The Pentagon has said after several modifications, the MOP was tested successfully in New Mexico last year.
Only 2 MOPs can fit inside the B-2’s weapons bay, when the plane can normally carry more than a dozen smaller weapons.
“The primary characteristic of such a large weapon is that sometimes you have a target and you just need a bigger bang,” Sutton said. “And that size of a weapon enables us to maybe hit targets that are buried and hardened.”
Pilots stand ready to complete missions of longer than 24 hours, Sutton said. Pilots completed missions of nearly 48 hours in the Afghanistan conflict.
In Washington, both Democrats and Republicans have criticized or expressed concerned with Obama’s initiative.
There is broader consensus around the idea of using military force if diplomacy does not work.
“We have now basically established a nuclear capable Iran,” Blunt said. “We shouldn’t allow a nuclear Iran and I would hope that we would have plans as to what to do about that.
Iran now has to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency to prove it is meeting some of the conditions of the nuclear agreement.
It is expected some of the sanctions will be lifted in early 2016 if the country is cooperating.
By Nick Thompson | nthompson@kolr10.com
Published 11/25 2015
