A few quick thoughts on Trump’s military strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities, in no particular order.
Trump has referred to this as very successful and – if I’m understanding his statement – essentially done. I don’t think that’s how it works. My understanding is that there’s real uncertainty about how many strikes it would take to destroy especially the Fordow facility, which is buried deep in a mountainside. So I think we should be skeptical about how we know how successful this was. You need after action reports to have any sense of what actually happened. The geography here, the composition of the mountainside, how it interacts with these particular munitions. These are incredibly complicated and make outcomes uncertain. (I’m going from memory since we’re reacting to breaking news. So keep that in mind.) The US has conducted extensive testing on these “bunker buster” bombs. And there has been extensive planning going back a number of years on how this attack specifically would be carried out. The Pentagon produces and maintains war plans on almost everything. But this specifically has been planned out in great detail and over many years.
Has Fordow been destroyed as Trump seems to be saying? I very much doubt the military planners would be stating that so confidently at this point.
Let me add a political judgment where, unlike with munitions, I feel like I have understanding of the situation. Trump’s statement on Truth Social was very much: ‘We did it. It worked. It’s done.’ I think Trump felt like he’d gotten himself far out on a limb with his threats and was now in a position where if he didn’t act he’d again be mocked as someone who always caves in response to fear or pressure – TACO, as they’re now saying. So he was stuck there and it was weighing on him. Now he feels like he’s addressed it. He acted. He doesn’t chicken out. Whether the facilities were actually destroyed or how much they were damaged is less of a priority. But I suspect he at least feels like he got himself out of the box in which he’d gotten himself into. I think that’s what’s driving a lot of this.
Let’s state the obvious that the US has committed a major act of war against another country without any specific immediate or even medium term threat. This is not a token bombing of the kind the US has done more than a few times in the post-Cold War era to make a point.
The logic of the situation is that the US has defined the Iranian nuclear program as a major problem/threat for a couple decades. Every US President going back to George W. Bush has said that a military attack is an option, thought not the preferred one, to put an end to it. If you look at it purely in those terms, if the US was ever going to act militarily to destroy these weapons facilities, this is probably the optimal moment to do so. Iran’s air defenses have been neutralized by Israel. The ‘axis of resistance’ states and paramilitaries that provided a lot of Iran’s deterrence has been decimated over the last 18 months. In relative terms Iran looks pretty defenseless right now. That’s why this happened.
The US has lots of military personnel and facilities very close to Iran, in fairly easy reach of Iranian drones or missiles. (The Post has a good map of where all those installations are; they really ring Iran.) So Iran has lots of ways to retaliate. And we, as a country, should be very prepared for that. Whether they actually will I’m less certain. As we noted above, Iran is in a very, very vulnerable position. Its military has sustained a lot of damage already. The US could do what it just did ten times over. I’m not predicting Iran will not retaliate. But I’m seeing a lot of commentators act like that’s a given. And I think we should be a little skeptical about that for the reasons I stated. But the big reality is that wars don’t end just because you say they do or you want them to. They’re inherently unpredictable and have impacts which play into the future in ways you can’t control. Donald Trump has taken us right into the center of a major war with a major regional power, albeit one that is for the moment on its knees militarily.
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