Trump's Iran Gambit

by David Bernell and Ambassador Thomas Graham (Retired)

The United States military bombed three sites in Iran on June 21 that have been central to Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump ordered strikes at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan based on longstanding concerns and the more immediate threat that Iran has moved dangerously close to developing the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. U.S. policy has consistently sought to avoid an Iranian nuclear capability, fearing it could spark a regional war and a nuclear arms race among many countries in the region. It would also directly threaten America’s close ally Israel. The strikes involved the use of munitions – built specifically for this type of mission – known as “bunker busters” because they can destroy sites far underground. Cruise missiles were also launched from a submarine in the region. The three sites targeted are all known for housing nuclear technology (such as thousands of centrifuges at Fordo and Natanz) and for producing and storing highly enriched uranium deep underground.

The attacks are believed to have caused extensive damage, but the assessment of how much damage – and how much the bombings set the Iranian program back in terms of months or years – remains unclear. President Trump has repeatedly stated that Iran’s nuclear capability has been “obliterated,” though contrary reports from the Department of Defense have not gone that far in describing what they have still called extensive damage. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which conducts inspections of facilities but has not visited Iran since the attack, has said that satellite evidence alone makes clear that the centrifuges at Fordo are “no longer operational.” However, in an effort meant to minimize the impact of the attack, the Iranian government has said it had moved its enriched uranium from the Fordo site in anticipation of a possible attack. Bolstering that claim is the fact that satellite imagery showed 16 cargo trucks at the Fordo site two days prior to the U.S. strike.

The American airstrike was carried out in the midst of military exchanges between Israel and Iran. The United States joined Israel’s war several days after Israel had already initiated military action against Iran on June 12 with its own bombing campaign on nuclear facilities and military sites. Israel has harbored fears of an Iranian nuclear weapon for a long time, and it has far greater concerns than the U.S., as Iranian government officials have for decades called for the destruction of Israel, with one former president saying it should be “wiped off the face of the earth.” An Iranian nuclear weapon has therefore been deemed entirely unacceptable by Israel as an existential threat. (It must be acknowledged as well that Israel has its own nuclear arsenal, estimated to consist of 90 weapons. Israel has never officially confirmed the existence of its nuclear program, but the fact is widely acknowledged. Therefore, Israel has a significant capability to deter an Iranian attack, with a far larger stockpile than Iran could produce in the near to medium term, and the ability to inflict immense devastation upon Iran in the event of war.)

Israel attacked numerous military and nuclear facilities. It also targeted key Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists. Iranian air defenses had already been weakened by an Israeli bombing attack in April, in response to Iran launching missiles and drones into Israel. So when Israel further attacked in June, it faced weakened defenses, allowing the military strike to result in significant destruction and the death of hundreds, including many of the military officers and scientists the Israelis sought to kill. While it is widely argued that wars cannot be completely won by air power alone, in the aftermath of the Israeli and U.S. bombing campaigns, the Israeli military has determined that while Iran might still “maintain parts of its nuclear program, it has been set back by years…given the damage suffered by Iran to the entire bomb-making process.”

The Iranians responded to both the Israeli and American attacks. In the case of Israel, an exchange was sustained by both countries over a period of twelve days, with Iranian missiles and drones targeting sites in Israel, mostly in and around Tel Aviv, but also at the Israeli Military Intelligence School, the Ministry of Interior in Haifa, the Weizmann Institute of Science, and an oil refinery and power plants. Israeli air defenses are more capable than Iran’s, so many of the incoming missiles and drones were destroyed before hitting their targets, causing far less damage than Iranian facilities sustained.

In response to the American attack, the Iranians did not pursue retaliation at nearly the same level it threw at Israel. Iran doesn’t have the military capability to reach targets in the United States, but the U.S. does have military assets in the Middle East. To that end, Iran launched a missile attack against the United States military base in Qatar. The base had already been evacuated by the American military in anticipation of the response, and Iran informed the Qatari government of the attack hours before it occurred, which allowed all of the missiles to be downed before they reached their target. The missile volley has thus been considered largely a symbolic act to show that the United States could not attack Iran without eliciting some kind of response.

President Trump announced on June 24 that a ceasefire agreement had been reached, and while there were additional attacks launched after this time, the ceasefire appears to be holding.

More of the Same, But Different This Time

It may seem that violent strikes between Israel and its neighbors, or U.S. strikes (once again without Congressional authorization) against a country long considered a threat, appear to be (unfortunately) business as usual. One doesn’t have to look too far back in the news to find similar occurrences. But this time things are different. The difference is that Iran is now being targeted directly by both the United States and Israel. This is a major break from the past. Until this time, the United States intelligence community had concluded as early as 2003 and reiterated in March 2025 their conclusion that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” Besides, direct attacks upon Iran were considered to be too difficult, too unlikely to be effective, and too risky due to the potential blowback. (And even while Israel has been more willing to support military action in the past, the United States has exercised a restraining influence.) Targeting Iran was seen as “crossing the Rubicon.”

Moreover, a military strike has been seen as potentially producing an outcome that might very well make things worse. Iran is considered to be very capable of effective retaliation, including terrorist attacks in the region or elsewhere in the world, and directing or sponsoring attacks by proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, groups in Iraq and Syria), any of which could be directed at American and Israeli military and civilian targets, including targets inside the United States. In addition, a potentially catastrophic outcome could be Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz with mines and terrorist attacks, which would halt all oil shipments from the Persian Gulf, wreaking havoc on the global economy by causing oil shortages and price spikes. For all these reasons, unless some threat was considered imminent – and no threat had been considered as such in the past – the more prudent option was to avoid direct attacks on Iran…until now.

The combination of having both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump in office after the October 7 attacks against Israel has also been a major contribution leading to the strikes against Iran. The Israeli Prime Minister has become increasingly daring and brazen over time. He has long been a hawk in Israeli politics, but even more so now than previously, he has been in favor of preferring the military option to pursue Israeli interests and security. It is difficult to overstate the shock and horror and outrage that the October 7 attack produced in Israel. This gave Netanyahu far more latitude to unleash military force against Israel’s enemies. Since this time, Israel has weakened Hamas and removed the immediate danger from Gaza. It has also severely diminished its enemy Hezbollah in Lebanon. An added bonus for Israel is that the hostile Syrian regime of Bashar Assad is gone too (not due to any Israeli actions), and in the aftermath the Israeli military has advanced into parts of southern Syria bordering Israel to achieve greater strategic depth in the region.

Israel now finds itself in a much more secure position than it was on October 7. Whether Iran was close to producing a bomb, or the more likely assessment that this was a case of Netanyahu pursuing a target of opportunity that presented itself, Israel took a chance on targeting Iran too, and it has now done so to great effect with tangible success. Regardless of the specific outcomes in terms of the overall damage done to Iran’s nuclear capabilities, there is a sense in Israel that significant progress has been made in enhancing the country’s security. The regional balance of military power seems to have shifted greatly in Israel’s favor.

There is also a difference in American foreign policy with Trump in the White House. Just as he does in breaking norms and taking unprecedented actions in American politics, Trump’s foreign policy is so unconventional, so unusual compared to earlier presidents, that he ventured well beyond the boundaries of what his predecessors have done in the Middle East with regard to Iran and Israel. It’s not that everything changed. Like Biden, Trump has essentially given Netanyahu relatively free rein to use massive military force against Hamas and Gaza. But in the period of just a few months, Trump has gone from suggesting “Trump Plaza Gaza” to ignoring the conflict. He has embraced Netanyahu, but has also sidelined and ignored Netanyahu, not even bothering to visit Israel on his recent trip to the Middle East. Trump opened up talks with Iran about nuclear weapons and talked to Hamas about hostages, both without consulting the Israelis. Trump also reached a truce with Houthi rebels in Yemen that stopped attacks on American shipping in the Red Sea, but it didn’t address attacks against Israel. Trump has been all too willing to publicly demonstrate that there are differences between U.S. and Israeli positions on crucial issues in the Middle East. This has been a break from typical past practice. In fact, only a few weeks ago, it was reported that Israelis were “wondering whether Israel is the next U.S. ally to be left behind by a president they considered, just months ago, to be the most pro-Israel in history.”

The American decision to bomb sites in Iran also proved to be a surprise because Trump’s orientation in foreign policy has been toward “America First,” meaning greater disengagement from America’s priorities regarding NATO, security guarantees for allies, support of Ukraine, and global trade. Trump has long criticized America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying he would stay out of more wars, particularly in the Middle East. In Trump’s first term he strongly criticized Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015, and then he reversed himself in his second term and started talking with Iran. Then just as quickly, Trump turned in the opposite direction and ordered the bombing of Iran, doing what no other American president before him would agree to do. But then then the next day Trump was again calling for more negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

The fluctuations in Trump’s foreign policy can be attributed to the types of characteristics long attributed to him: his short attention span, his narcissism, his well-known capacity for flip-flopping on all manner of words and deeds, his love of being at the center of things and the focus of attention, his desire to be seen as the strongman who gets things done, his lack of strategic thought, his tendency to respond only to the immediate moment without having a core goal or interest, his proclivity for agreeing with the most recent person he spoke with, and his view that he knows better than anyone about anything. These appraisals encapsulate the critiques that Trump acted in this case from the gut, contrary to longstanding intelligence assessments, simply because he seemed to see that Netanyahu’s military action against Iran was achieving success in weakening Iran, and Trump wanted in on the action so he could get attention and praise too.

Critics of the president continue to bemoan his leadership and his mere presence in office. And yet in this case, Trump’s break with past American policy – which involved taking limited actions against Iran’s support of terrorism and regional troublemaking, and which did not seem to impede Iran’s growing power and influence – has led to a positive appraisal in some quarters. Now, even people who have been strong critics of Donald Trump are giving him praise. Political figures such as Adam Kinzinger, Chris Christie, and John Bolton expressed their agreement with the decision to bomb Iran. Even some Democrats did so, such as Representatives Steny Hoyer and Jared Moskowitz. In the media, notable critics such as Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic and Bret Stephens in the New York Times offered similar assessments.

While these reactions to Trump’s decision do not suggest a wholesale reappraisal of his presidency, they do illustrate how significant the shift has been with respect to this particular element of American foreign policy.

What Now?

What happens next depends upon what each country thinks it has learned from its actions and the responses elicited. There are several possibilities.

Israel: The Israeli government may very well be optimistic about things at this point. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has prioritized security at just about any cost since October 7, 2023, and this includes the return of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The level of violence that Israel faced that day was the most it has ever dealt with on its territory, and the number of Jewish people killed on that day was more than any since the Holocaust.

In response to October 7, Israel has gone after Hamas with unprecedented ferocity, and it has severely weakened Hamas as a security threat and a political power in Gaza. In the process of pursuing its security goals, however, Israel has largely leveled Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing a million people from their homes. This destruction has sparked a humanitarian crisis and widespread international criticism, as housing, food, and medical care are all in short supply in Gaza. In addition, Jews around the world have found themselves the targets of anger and violence by those who oppose Israel and support Gaza.

Netanyahu and the Israeli government have also incapacitated the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has posed a significant security threat to Israel for decades, firing rockets into northern Israel and conducting attacks and kidnappings of Israelis. When Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, to demonstrate its solidarity with Hamas, Israel also stepped up its longstanding military efforts against Hezbollah. It even put into action a plan it had been developing for years. In September 2024, thousands of explosions struck members of Hezbollah in a sophisticated attack that targeted their pagers and walkie-talkies. The attacks killed dozens of people and injured nearly 3,000. They also completely surprised Hezbollah, which had been using these older technologies instead of cell phones to avoid Israeli intelligence. The attack, which was followed by an Israeli bombing campaign that still continues, has been devastating to the group and has severely weakened it.

Iran has served as the major source of support for Hamas and Hezbollah’s violence against Israel by supplying weapons and political support. The country is considered by Israel as the actor that bears great responsibility for the violence it has faced over the years. Now that Israel has engaged in direct attacks against Iran and achieved significant success, Israel can look at the regional balance of power and assess that it is in a far stronger position than it was prior to October 7. Its major enemies are greatly diminished, while it appears far stronger and more secure from subsequent attack. The Israeli government may thus conclude that the military option is a good one and will increasingly turn to it again and again.

Iran: The Iranians are an unknown factor. Perhaps the country’s leadership will decide that pursuing a nuclear weapon is too risky and would expose the country to further attack, and possibly put the regime itself at risk of its own demise. Therefore, Iran might conclude that if it avoids building a nuclear bomb, it will avoid being attacked. Moreover, the government might determine that because both Israel and the United States now have crossed the line that they had avoided crossing until now, it will seem easier for these two countries to choose to attack Iran again if they determine it is in their interests to do so. The precedent has been set.

On the other hand, the Iranians have not been known to back down from a confrontation. Instead, they find ways to fight back, usually indirectly, as they play the long game to weaken their enemies and establish their own regional power. The more likely response from Iran is therefore that the government decides it needs nuclear weapons to protect its security and deter further attacks. The United States and Israel cannot ensure denuclearization with only airstrikes, so the Iranians can hide their work and maybe bury things even further underground to evade American bunker buster bombs.

Iran’s challenges in building a nuclear weapon are twofold. First is producing enough highly enriched uranium, which the country has clearly established it can do. It has produced 408 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to a level of 60% purity, and far more is enriched at lower levels. It would need to achieve a level of 90% to produce a weapon, but this is doable in short order if new or existing centrifuges can be made available to do this. The second challenge is weaponization, and Iran can do this too. While there have been recent articles discussing the difficulty in producing a bomb, these accounts are not entirely correct. There is more than one way to design an atomic weapon. The very first such weapon, which was detonated at Hiroshima in 1945, was never even tested because the scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos knew the simple design would work. It involved creating what was effectively a gun, firing one piece of highly enriched uranium into another to create a critical mass that would explode. Building an implosion type weapon, like the one detonated at Nagasaki, is far more complex, and has been the focus of commentaries highlighting the difficulties, but it is not necessary for the Iranians to use the more complex design if they produce a nuclear weapon. The gun-type weapon would have to be delivered by a large airplane and not a missile due to its size and weight, but producing the weapon is not beyond Iran’s capabilities.

While U.S. intelligence agencies have said for several years that they have no evidence Iran has decided to actually make a bomb, this assessment has been repeatedly challenged, including by both the current American and Israeli governments, which make an argument that there is no reason other than building a weapon to have thousands of centrifuges deep underground enriching uranium to a level as high as 60%. These actions and capabilities signal that the Iranian goal is to build a nuclear weapon.

The events of the last weeks create further incentive and impetus for Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon, and to do so quickly. Iran has even suggested it might withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the key treaty designed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and monitor nuclear facilities. Moreover, the Iranian government is cognizant of recent history, and what has happened to countries that were enemies of the United States who didn’t pursue nuclear weapons: the governments of Iraq and Libya came under attack by the U.S. and were overthrown. North Korea, on the other hand, built nuclear weapons and has remained safe from the American military. The lesson, then, is to acquire nuclear weapons. However, the question for Iran (and the world) at this time is whether or not they still have the infrastructure to do it.

The United States: Then there is the United States, with Donald Trump in the White House. Trump’s words and actions are often contradictory and wholly unpredictable. No one knows what the man will say or do next. Prior to and after the American bombing in Iran, the President has been calling upon Iran to negotiate a deal. But American actions have likely diminished diplomacy an option. While the U.S. bombers were on their way to Iran, Trump had said that he would take two weeks to make a decision about whether to join the Israelis in military strikes. In the interim he would try forestall the use of force and pursue a negotiated settlement. This was a lie. When the president was still calling for diplomacy, the U.S. bombers were already on their way to Iran. Trump used the promise of diplomacy as a ruse. This may very well make diplomacy unavailable in the future. It makes Iran (and others) unwilling to even enter into talks with the United States, as the whole effort may be a charade.

Even if negotiations with the United States can achieve an agreement, Donald Trump’s record may not inspire confidence that he or the United States will live up to their agreements. Iran negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the United States in 2015. Then in 2018, Trump tore up the deal and withdrew from the agreement Obama had negotiated. Trump has even rejected his own international agreements. He negotiated a deal with Canada and Mexico on trade to revise NAFTA during his first term. Then he rejected his own agreement and imposed massive tariffs on these same countries in his second term. Trump seems to be teaching others that there is little value in negotiating with him, or in the United States in general. Trump cannot be trusted during negotiations or after.

The aftermath of the military strikes and the tenuous ceasefire in place might be seen as providing an opening toward some larger agreement or a less violent future. Trump, Netanyahu, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may have a “Nixon-to-China” moment awaiting them, one that offers a path to less violent relations. However, any such opportunity seems unlikely to be pursued. Not only are the interests so widely divergent and the gulf so vast between Iran on the one hand and the U.S. and Israel on the other. It is also the case that none of these three countries seem to have the leadership interested in or capable of using the conflict to turn disaster and conflict into opportunity – as Israel and Egypt did in the 1970’s after multiple wars. Trump, Netanyahu, and Khamenei seem far better suited to prolonging the conflict as opposed to ending it.