Donald Trump was looking for a simple, if explosive, solution to stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions when he ordered strikes on nuclear facilities across the country.
But as the smoke cleared over the three underground facilities hit by stealth bombers and cruise missiles over the weekend, experts say the result may actually bring an Iranian nuclear bomb closer to reality and raise the risk of greater U.S. involvement in the conflict.
“Technically, it’s probably slightly further away, but politically it’s much more imminent,” said Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute and a former member of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), which advises the Secretary of State.
“Iran has been a few months away from a nuclear weapon since about 2007. It’s clear that the thing that keeps them a few months away is not their technical capacity; it’s their political will. And I think whatever loss in technical capacity they have suffered, it is more than compensated for by an increase in political will,” Lewis told The Independent.
Trump described the U.S. strikes against Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan as a “spectacular military success” in brief remarks from the White House on Saturday night, adding that the sites had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
But Lewis said the showpiece of Trump’s attack — the attack on the Fordow nuclear facility, built deep underground, which required the use of 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs — was limited in its effectiveness because Iran had time to evacuate and remove equipment before the strikes.
“I understand that Fordow has a symbolic importance to people, but it is by no means the only underground facility associated with Iran’s nuclear program. And given how long it took the U.S. to strike, it’s not clear to me that by the time it was hit, it was even the most important, because the Iranians had had time to power off centrifuges and possibly remove them,” he added.
One of the primary motivations for launching the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was to destroy Iran’s ability to enrich uranium. But the country has amassed a stockpile over the years of an estimated 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium — enough to make around 10 nuclear weapons if it were further enriched from 60 percent where it is now, to the 90 percent required to construct a device.
Following the strikes, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on Monday that his agency was seeking access to “account for” Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpiles.
Vice President JD Vance conceded on Sunday that the stockpile is still in Iranian hands and its whereabouts are unknown.
“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” he said.
But Vance’s desire to open negotiations with the Iranians about that missing uranium will be much more difficult since the attacks, according to Kelsey Davenport, the Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, where she focuses on the nuclear and missile programs in Iran.
She told The Independent that this weekend’s attack will make Iran “much more likely politically to pursue nuclear weapons, and the factions arguing that nuclear weapons are necessary for deterrence are only strengthened now.”
“The U.S. decision to strike Iran before diplomacy was exhausted in the midst of a negotiation process has destroyed U.S. credibility, and is going to raise serious questions about whether the U.S. could be trusted to negotiate again in good faith,” she said.
It’s not the first time Iran has been burned by Trump for seeking a negotiated settlement over its nuclear program, either.
In 2018, Trump in his first term pulled out of a nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that had successfully and dramatically reduced Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.
In response to Trump’s withdrawal and the reintroduction of sanctions, Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities.
That led to it building a stockpile of highly enriched uranium that prompted the Israeli attack earlier this month.
“The United States faces a real quandary here,” Davemport said. “If the U.S. objective is to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, diplomacy is going to be more challenging politically because of the U.S. credibility deficit, but also technically, because we may never know if all of Iran’s enriched uranium is accounted for.
“We may never know if all of Iran’s centrifuges are accounted for,” he said.
“Any diplomatic agreement is going to need to look entirely different from what the U.S. has attempted to negotiate in the past — that is if the opportunity arises to negotiate an agreement,” she added.
There are also concerns that Iran’s nuclear program, or what is left of it, will move underground. That would begin with the stockpile of enriched uranium that is currently unaccounted for.
“If it is intact and Iran is able to keep it that way, they could potentially use it in a new covert enrichment facility to produce material for several nuclear weapons in a matter of months,” said Nicholas Miller, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College and an expert on nuclear proliferation and nonproliferation policy.
“If they think they can pull it off, Iran’s leaders may calculate developing nuclear weapons is the best insurance policy against externally-backed regime change,” he added.
Miller believes the strikes have made it “more likely that the U.S. gets drawn deeply into the conflict.”
“Depending on the scope and manner of Iranian retaliation against U.S. interests, Trump may feel compelled to respond. Israel may also convince the Trump administration to aid in an effort to destroy the remnants of Iran’s nuclear program,” he said.
Davenport, too, said there is a risk that the matter remains unsolved, and that might mean a longer-term commitment than Trump might have hoped for.
“There’s a risk that if the United States wants to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran in the future, it’s going to need to strike Iran again and again. Because Iran is going to retain that knowledge, the risk of a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be eliminated,” she said.
“If the United States broadens its objectives and attempts to overthrow the regime, that could be severely destabilizing for the region, so not an approach for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran in the long term. Regime change is not a Non-Proliferation strategy,” she added.
