U.S. Bombs Three Iranian Nuke Sites
The war is on.
WaPo (“U.S. warplanes strike three Iranian nuclear sites in sweeping attack“):
The U.S. military carried out sweeping strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, President Donald Trump said late Saturday, marking a major escalation for his administration that tethers the United States directly to a conflict with no clear outcome or end in sight.
The president said in a social media post that U.S. warplanes had carried out a “very successful attack” on three sites, including the subterranean Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, a key target that Trump had openly deliberated striking for days.
“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” Trump said. “All planes are safely on the way home.”
At the White House later in the evening, Trump threatened more attacks on Iran if it decides to retaliate.
“This cannot continue,” Trump said. “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last days,” he added, referring in part to attacks that Israel has carried out on Iran.
Trump, flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said other targets will be easier to hit if the U.S. strikes again.
WSJ (“U.S. Strikes ‘Obliterated’ Iran’s Nuclear Sites, Trump Says”):
The U.S. struck three nuclear sites in Iran, joining Israel’s attacks against Tehran’s nuclear program and risking further escalation of the conflict.
President Trump, speaking to the nation late Saturday, called the strikes “a spectacular military success” and said Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated.” Trump had ordered the attack abruptly, hoping it would catch Tehran off guard.
The sites attacked—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—represent the core of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. The U.S. bombers that attacked the nuclear sites dropped bunker-busting bombs called GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators for the first time in warfare.
While the attack had been signaled for days, many thought it was a bluff to pressure Iran to make concessions. The “two week” window was seen as a tell. Instead, it was misdirection.
I’m not shocked that President Trump made the call to bomb the sites, but I’m definitely surprised by the scope of the attack. Reportedly, multiple MOPs were dropped on Natanz and some combination of MOPs and TLAMs were fired on the other sites. If an attack was going to happen, a massive one makes sense: there can be no doubt that this sets Iran’s program back considerably.
[UPDATED TO ADD: The demonstration effects are worth noting as well. These bombers reportedly flew 36 hours from their base in Missouri, requiring several mid-air refuelings, and were able to carry out this mission seemingly flawlessly. And we’ve just tested our most powerful conventional bomb, multiple times, against real targets.]
As always, though, the question is What now?
How does Iran respond? They’ve threatened to attack US military personnel stationed in the region. Thankfully, their regional proxies have been weakened considerably by Israeli actions over the past few months and the IRGC has been decapitated. Still, Iran is a powerful country and they will surely need to retalliate for this humiliation.
The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols, who in a previous life was a Cold War nuclear weapons expert (“The United States Bombed Iran. What Comes Next?”):
So what’s next? Before considering the range of possibilities, it’s important to recognize how much we cannot know at this moment. The president’s statement tonight was a farrago of contradictions: He said, for example, that the main Iranian nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated”—but it will take time to assess the damage, and he has no way of knowing this. He claimed that the Iranian program has been destroyed—but added that there are still “many targets” left. He said that Iran could suffer even more in the coming days—but the White House has reportedly assured Iran through back channels that these strikes were, basically, a one-and-done, and that no further U.S. action is forthcoming.
[…]
Only one outcome is certain: Hypocrisy in the region and around the world will reach galactic levels as nations wring their hands and silently pray that the B-2s carrying the bunker-buster bombs did their job.
Beyond that, the most optimistic view is that the introduction of American muscle into this war will produce a humiliating end to Iran’s long-standing nuclear ambitions, enable more political disorder in Iran, and finally create the conditions for the fall of the mullahs. This may have been the Israeli plan from the start: Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability and the need to engage in preemption, this was a preventive war. The Israelis could not destroy sites such as Fordow without the Americans. Israeli military actions suggest that Netanyahu was trying to increase the chances of regime change in Tehran while making a side bet on dragging Trump into the fray and outsourcing the tougher nuclear targets to the United States.
The very worst outcome is the polar opposite of the optimistic case. In this bleak alternative, the Air Force either didn’t find, or couldn’t destroy, all of the key parts of the Iranian program; the Iranians then try to sprint across the finish line to a bomb. In the meantime, Tehran lashes out against U.S. targets in the region and closes the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian opposition fades in importance as angry Iranian citizens take their government’s part.
One dangerous possibility in this pessimistic scenario is that the Iranians do real damage to American assets or kill a number of U.S. servicepeople, and Trump, confused and enraged, tries to widen his war against a country more than twice the size of Iraq.
The President has taken a huge gamble. We’ll soon find out how well he and his team assessed the risks and planned for them.
1) I did not think he’d do it, I was wrong.
2) On balance I’d like the Iranian nuclear program to be destroyed or at least significantly set back. I don’t buy the notion that it will just reconstitute itself.
3) I would caution Democrats not to rush to condemn this action – it may look good six months from now, but it won’t play well today.
4) Every leader of every nation on earth now understands not just intellectually, but viscerally, that Donald Trump can kill him.
5) I’ll be interested to see whether Russia’s condemnations are pro forma or genuinely angry.
6) Of course the big question: how does Iran respond? Surely they had plans in place.
7) Starting to look like maybe, just maybe, Hamas made a serious mistake on October 7.
8) How do Iran’s minorities see this?
It’s all pretty quaint nowadays, but this – like Israel’s prior attack – was a clear violation of international law and another critical strike against the rules-based international order.
In other words, a big win for nuclear proliferation.
It should be noted, of course, that previous administrations (ones without an alcoholic former TV host as SecDef) believed that attacking Iran would be a very bad idea.
@Michael Reynolds: I’ll be interested to see how the politics of this play out, too. Thus far, Democrats are condemning it as illegal more so than as unwise.
@drj: I was composing a follow-up making that point as you were typing. Alas, there’s no significant consequence for breaking US or international law in this case.
@James Joyner:
State actors (including Iran) will notice and act accordingly.
@Michael Reynolds: “I would caution Democrats not to rush to condemn this action – it may look good six months from now, but it won’t play well today.”
I’m reminded about how few Democrats were willing to step up and criticize the invasion of Iraq until long after it had proven itself to be the hideous mistake they all knew it was, and how that acquiescence, which they all thought so wise, seriously hurt them later on. There were a lot of reasons Obama beat Hillary, but a big one was that he had opposed the war from the start and she had decided to go along for her own political convenience.
Or, if you’re in more of a historical mood, we could look at LBJ and his advisors who knew that the Vietnam War was a pointless disaster, but wouldn’t do anything to stop it for fear of being called soft on Communism.
Refusing to stand up for your values until it becomes politically convenient is something that hurts Democrats and destroys their credibility.
You don’t get to shout “Go team Trump!” today and six months from now say “Oh, I knew it was bad all along.”
@James Joyner: “Let’s see how the domestic politics play out” was one of the sentiments that allowed the great fiasco of the Iraq invasion to unroll.
@wr:
My personal history suggests there’s no profit in being right before the consensus. Remember Senator Wayne Morse? Few people do. I’m not suggesting, ‘Yay Trump,’ just don’t get too outraged too early. No one votes for or likes the guy who was right too soon.
I’m feeling “Mission Accomplished” vibes.
@wr:
Or, at least, that he pretended to ex post facto and people fell for it. There’s not much evidence Obama actually opposed the Iraq War from the start.
There’s no benefit for Democrats in waiting to condemn Trump for breaking his promise to keep the US out of Middle Eastern wars, end wars in Ukraine and Gaza, lower prices on day one, and release the Epstein files. Democrats should throw the kitchen sink at Trump.
@Kathy: Has Iran’s nuclear program been “obliterated” like taco man and town drunk said, or not?
Trump has succeeded in totally grabbing the attention and leadership of the US. This action has freed him from the checks and balances that we were told characterize American government. If this attack results in a counterattack, the American people will rally around him. The only obstacle to complete government by caudillo is the two term limit. I doubt that Trump will be able to overturn that, but his successor will. Russia is our model.
A setback for Iran, loud chest thumping for Trumpsters, but hardly a definitive outcome.
And unless Western or Israel intelligence had obtained precise architectural plans of Iran’s nuke bunkers to help plan the bombing attack, it will be hard to know how effective an outcome was achieved.
Bunker Buster Myth
Iran’s best move, assuming they still have some capacity intact, would be to “play possum” and tell the world that their nuke program has been obliterated. Then pick up the pieces, and quietly go about pursuit of nuclear goals. Without superb intelligence, we’d never know.
Unfortunately I was correct about what would happen. Not tooting my own horn here, it was just training and experience.
This is just the latest example of many demonstrating why facts on the ground are more important and reliable indicators of what is likely to happen than what people say or the various attempts to determine intentions via what can charitably be called mind reading.
@DK:
I should repurpose an old joke and write a 1,000 answer on the subject:
Probably not (repeat 500 times).
Iran has been at war with the US since 1979. For 45 years, the US took casualties with the only response of feckless “sanctions” and Biden sending releasing pallets of cash for them to use to fund their nuclear program and proxies attacking US citizens and Israel.
So, Oh No!, Iran will try to kill more Americans because the US took action to seriously set back their nuclear weapons program. Oh No! Israel has defanged their proxies on their borders. Trump in his first term finally exacted a cost for IRGC terrorist-directing/funding activities by taking out Solemani.
Yes, things might go worse, but there isn’t much worse it can get than if Iran’s murderous terrorist supporting regime got nuclear weapon material which has been set back.
In the 1980s, except for small actions by the IRA and ETA, Iran’s fingers were all over the terror attacks that defined that decade. And they’ve been even more involved in the 35 years since that decade ended.
@DK: “Or, at least, that he pretended to ex post facto and people fell for it. There’s not much evidence Obama actually opposed the Iraq War from the start.”
Yes, I want to spend my Sunday relitigating decades-old useless arguments over which Democrats suck and how badly when our current president has just put us in the middle of another Middle East war. Eyes on the prize, y’all!
@JKB: “Iran has been at war with the US since 1979.”
Which is entirely true, as long as words don’t actually have any meaning other than what JKB chooses them to mean today. There’s glory for you!*
*h/t Humpty Dumpty
@Andy:
This bears repeating. Impact vs intent.
Escalation
History rhymes. CBS reports a sub launched cruise missiles at 5 PM Eastern just before our planes entered Iranian airspace. The Clock app tells me Tehran is 7-1/2 hours later, making it 12:30 AM. So the attack was today, June 22, in Iran. June 22 is the 84th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa the German invasion of Russia. Barbarossa was initially very successful and ultimately disastrous.
Absent regime change, this war could go on for the next several years. It so, it would be asymmetrical, meaning the Iranians will target the low hanging fruit, e.g., assassinations of ambassadors, bombings in social clubs where GIs gather, and a few downed airlines. I can see this turning out like the 80s under Reagan (Libya, Lebanon, etc.). And that’s thing, once warfare begins, nobody knows where the exit ramp is; not to mention that the Iranian government will be more resolute in acquiring a nuclear weapon. So much for non-interventionism and isolationism. It’s clear now that what MAGA stands for is nothing but what Trump says; there just isn’t clear ideology. Let’s put it this way, if the regular Joe Blow Republican American was told that the sitting president could live with a government in a country that allows more abortions than ever before, biggest deficits than ever before, and attacks the biggest country in the Middle East, he would insist that that Democratic president was the worst ever, (and not to mention current WH corruption and the whole Russia thing), and that we would need to remove him, yet here we are. As one can see, the GOP is objectively pro abortion, pro deficits, pro war, pro bribery.
@Rob1: “it will be hard to know how effective an outcome was achieved”
It was always going to be difficult for the public to know how effective an attack had been. Iran isn’t a reliable source, and could have reasons for letting the world believe the attack was very effective, or not at all effective. The trump administration has depleted its credibility in five months, and it doesn’t help that its first descriptions of the results were simplistic statements that smacked of marketing, or perhaps a Dr. Seuss story on war.
@Rob1: On another comment thread, one of our resident Trump policy experts described Iran as having the hell bombed out of it. The Parliamentary response to the attack doesn’t sound like a country that just got the hell bombed out of it.
He also made reference to Iran having brought this (???) on themselves. Somebody brought something on themselves. I wish I was as confident as others about who and what. Laissez les bons temps roullez!
I’m sure I’m not the only one who was just a bit uncomfortable last week, thinking that trump might do something rash in an attempt to project personal strength after a good run of events and commentary portraying him as indecisive, chicken, and unpopular. “They call me a TACO…I’ll show them!”
@gVOR10:
June 22 is also the day
Napoleon abdicated in 1815
Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmelling in 1938
The United States successfully winning the battle for Okinawa in 1945
@Eusebio:
He chickened out of diplomacy, of even pretending to control Bibi, of isolationism…
I wonder how long this war of Israel/USA (or USA/Israel) has been in the planning stage. First Israel launches its attack to disable Iran’s defenses and then the US delivers the coup de grâce. This all can’t just be an improvisation. My possibly paranoid idea implies that further steps are coming.
Well, Vance says the strikes weren’t about regime change. Trump says they are. I guess Trump and JD aren’t on the same page.
@Michael Reynolds:
And there’s me last night saying I was mistaken about an imminent US attack.
My run as a reliable contrary indicator continues.
Cassandra in reverse, indeed.
@Michael Reynolds:
Depends on the goals, doesn’t it?
9/11 didn’t turn out well for bin Laden personally, but for putting the Middle East in chaos and getting the US to hurt itself, it did pretty good.
Is Israel safer medium-to-long term? Any Dem administration in the US will be a lot less likely to be reflexively supportive, and there are pretty big cracks between Israel and most of Europe.
And it got the US to elect Trump*, which will prove to be incredibly damaging to the US.
Hamas doesn’t care about Palestinian civilians, but with basically everyone in Gaza being displaced at least once, it’s not going to be that hard to get a fair number to sign up to strike back. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is oversimplified, but when the bottom rungs aren’t being met, people are pretty easily radicalized.
And any accelerationists in Hamas are positively delighted.
So again, if you think 10/7 didn’t turn out well for Hamas, I question what metrics you are using to determine that.
*: it’s hard to get numbers on how many didn’t vote at all because “both parties are the same” on Israel. It certainly didn’t help, and with the election being decided by 1%, it’s plausible to think that this was a deciding factor among many.
@Slugger:
I doubt it.
The US strikes so far appear to be well short of a decisive conclusion.
A truly co-ordinated operation would have more likely included US participation in defence-supression.
That Israel hoped that their SOAD and command/control destruction would invite US action is almost certain.
That Israel and the US co-ordinated, much less so.
Though it would be very interesting to have details on the extent of IDF/Pentagon data sharing in this.
@Gustopher:
The Middle East has, arguably, been chaotic ever since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Bin Laden’s desires are probably even more blocked now than they ever were, if you consider the politics of most ME/NA states.
To which Iran, ironically, has been the greatest contributor.
One variant of “death to America” fucks the other, lol.
Israel has probably ended the Iranian threat, at least in the short term.
But it does not resolve its basic problems, despite the fantasies of Likud and the Israeli far right, and their American supporters.
Consider German Chancellor Merz, who has both supported the strikes on Iran, and condemned the Israeli idiocy in Gaza.
Europe generally will support, or at least passively accept, Israel and the US wrecking the mullahs ambitions.
It won’t accept “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza and the West Bank.
And Israel cannot survive economically without the European trade connections.
Similarly, most ME states have little problem with the Pasdarani being destroyed.
That does not mean they can or will give Israel carte blanche in Palestine.
@gVOR10:
Perhaps largely because Hitler made the massive mistake of leaving a rather bad-tempered Britain in play.
Iran does not seem to have any effective external support.
Both Russia and China are keeping their heads down.