Trump smashes Iran—and gambles the regime will now capitulate

PERHAPS THE most predicted air strike in history finally took place in the pre-dawn darkness on June 22nd. A group of American B-2 bombers dropped multiple enormous bunker-busting bombs on Fordow, one of Iran’s most important nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump has threatened such an attack for months. Israel, which went to war with Iran on June 13th, has been urging him on and the Middle East has been on edge for days awaiting this moment.

Two huge questions now loom: how much the strike has damaged Iran’s nuclear programme, and whether and how Iran chooses to retaliate against America. The answers to both will help determine whether this is a one-off strike and, perhaps, the beginning of the end of Israel’s war, or whether America will be dragged into a wider conflict.

Details of the operation are scarce (the Pentagon is expected to hold a briefing on Sunday morning in Washington). It involved six B-2 bombers, which dropped bunker-busting munitions on Fordow; reports suggest between six and 12 bombs. America also struck two other nuclear sites, at Natanz and Isfahan, with cruise missiles launched from submarines. The UN’s nuclear watchdog and the Saudi Arabian authorities said there was no sign of nuclear contamination in the region (though none would be expected from these strikes).

In an uncompromising address at the White House, Mr Trump said Iran’s nuclear programme had been “completely and totally obliterated”. That is an overstatement: Iran has decades of accumulated expertise that is hard to eliminate. But if America has destroyed Fordow, it has probably set the programme back significantly. Fordow is one of two sites where Iran has been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade. The other one, at Natanz, had already been damaged by Israeli strikes. If both are wrecked, Iran may be left with no large-scale enrichment capacity.

Fordow is buried under the side of a mountain beneath perhaps 500 metres of rock. Some military officials had been sceptical that even the GBU-57, a 13-tonne bomb that is the largest in America’s arsenal, could penetrate deeply enough to destroy Fordow. That is why America dropped so many of them. Analysts will have to wait for satellite imagery to assess the damage. Still, even if they did not destroy the enrichment hall, the bombs may have caused enough of a shock wave to wreck the sensitive equipment contained inside.

Also unclear is the status of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It kept much of the stuff in tunnels at Isfahan. The American cruise-missile attack was probably intended to collapse the entrances to those tunnels. But Iranian officials hinted before the strike that they had moved some of the uranium elsewhere.

How will Iran’s embattled regime respond? Hours after the American strike it sent Israelis scrambling to shelters with a barrage of ballistic missiles (most were intercepted). It may not stop there. Before the strike, Iranian officials warned that they would retaliate directly against America. Afterwards one commentator on state television warned that Americans in the region, whether civilians or military personnel, were now legitimate targets. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said “the events this morning are outrageous and will have everlasting consequences”. He added that America’s strikes were “criminal” and that Iran “reserves all options to defend itself”.

Beyond continuing to attack Israel, the regime has a menu of options, all of them bad. It could fire drones and missiles at American bases in the Middle East. It could attack America’s allies, targeting oil fields in Saudi Arabia or skyscrapers in Dubai. It could try to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which one-third of seaborne crude oil is shipped, sending the oil price surging.

Any such moves risk being suicidal, though, because they could prompt an even bigger American response. Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, will want to retaliate. He also wants his regime to survive. While Iran deliberates, its proxies may act. The Houthis, an Iran-backed militia in Yemen, have already threatened to resume attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea if America attacks Iran. Militias in Iraq, which have already launched a few drones towards Israel, could attack American targets in that country as well. Israel is preparing for potential strikes from Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon.

The best-case scenario is that Iran settles on a symbolic retaliation, much as it did in 2020, when Mr Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general. The president might then push Israel to wind down its war and urge Iran to resume negotiations over a new nuclear deal. “The bully of the Middle East must now make peace,” he said in his White House address. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.” This is a favoured tactic of Mr Trump’s: escalate to de-escalate. Some Iranian officials have already played down the damage to their nuclear sites, which might be a sign that they too want to avoid a big riposte. But there will be others urging one, which could draw America into a cycle of retaliation.

That has been the fear for isolationist voices in Mr Trump’s coalition, who have agitated for days against America’s direct involvement in the war. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s chief strategist from his first term, suggested America was “kicking over a hornet’s nest”. But most Republicans were either supportive, subdued or silent. The Republican Party’s congressional leadership rallied around the president, albeit with notes of caution. America “faced very serious choices ahead”, said Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee. Democrats, for their part, assailed the president mainly for ordering the assault without congressional authorisation.

A final scenario is that the war neither expands immediately nor ends with a deal. America wants an agreement in which Iran gives up the right to enrich uranium. Iran has rebuffed that demand, both in two months of pre-war talks and at a meeting with European diplomats in Geneva on June 20th. Instead of a big military response, it could now double down on its nuclear project. Iran could abandon the Non-Proliferation Treaty, toss out UN inspectors and try to rebuild the programme in secret. Earlier this month Iranian officials talked about setting up a third uranium-enrichment facility. If they have a hidden stash of nuclear material, and the centrifuges to refine it, they may be tempted to try to dash for a crude nuclear device.

For now, Mr Trump’s strike has set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But the implications of a direct American attack on Iran are momentous and unpredictable. The regime could escalate, forcing Mr Trump to respond, or it could totter, causing chaos in the region. The attacks could galvanise talks that end both the threat of an Iranian bomb and Iran’s long isolation. Or the bombing of Iran could leave the regime intact, a pariah state that is even more intent on a clandestine nuclear weapon, drawing America into a long-term military campaign to contain the threat. ■