Trump's big bully blunder won a worthless prize

Trump’s reckless bluster about his “spectacular military success” in Iran has just been thoroughly debunked. A classified defense report that surfaced Tuesday indicated that the U.S. targeted bombing campaign barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear program. While the attack set Iran’s nuclear enrichment program back by “only a few months,” the global fallout will last years.

As Trump was braying to the world about his singular spectacularity, claiming U.S. bunker buster bombs had “totally obliterated” Iran’s enrichment sites, no one—including Trump—knew the extent of the damage, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

To the exact point, no one knew then, or knows now, where Iran hid its enriched uranium, but U.S. bombs apparently didn’t hit the stash. Had the uranium been struck, a significant increase in radioactivity would have been detected at the bombsites, which the IAEA confirmed did not happen well before team Trump claimed otherwise.

Speculation about what comes next, including whether the paper-thin ceasefire will hold, is just that. While we wait, several things are true at once:

• A nation that supports terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis rebels should not have world-annihilating nuclear weapons.
• Israel has been trying to get the U.S. to deploy ordnance bombs, claiming Iran was hours away from having nuclear weapons, since 2005.
• Trump is directly responsible for ending the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, which he replaced with absolutely nothing, enabling Iran to proceed with the enrichment program he just attacked.
• After Trump ordered Qassem Soleimani killed in a U.S. airstrike in January 2020, Iran announced it would no longer abide by any restraints on its nuclear program under the previous agreement.
• Article I of the U.S. Constitution says only Congress, not the president, can declare war except in cases of emergency.
• On June 21, Israel’s foreign minister said that Israel’s own previous bombing campaign had already set Iran’s nuclear weapons development back by several years, which means,
• The U.S. did not face an imminent threat or emergency on June 22 when Trump unilaterally pulled the trigger, therefore,
• Trump’s action violated the U.S. Constitution which reserves war powers, except in genuine emergencies, to Congress.

What intelligence did Trump rely on?

At least when Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq, they did so after spending a year presenting data and rationale to the American public, leading Congress to authorize the attack. Trump rejected U.S. intelligence, disregarded Congress’ constitutional role, and ordered massive attacks based on Netanyahu’s word alone.

Despite a tenuous two-day-old ceasefire, international fears of a dangerously escalating conflict throughout the Middle East persist. Just yesterday, JD Vance acknowledged that Iran’s 900 lb. stockpile of enriched uranium remains intact. Intelligence cited trucks moving materials assumed to be enriched uranium out of two bombed sites, Fordo and Natanz, right before the U.S. attacks. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the material could be used to build about 10 nuclear weapons.

Minimizing the importance of the uranium’s location, Vance said the crucial question is whether Iran can still “enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level and can they convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon?” It sure seems like knowing where the uranium is located, including whether it has been moved to an as-yet undetected enrichment facility, would be the first step in assessing the risk of its conversion to weapons-grade. But when Trump killed Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, we lost strict monitoring and verification safeguards including the ability to inspect facilities. Unknown facilities could be anywhere, thanks to Trump, and it’s impossible to know what we don’t know.

Experts also seem to agree, despite Trump and Fox News’ non-stop bluster, that Fordo’s deeply buried equipment may also have survived.

Geopolitical blowback is not yet known

After unilaterally killing the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump has now unilaterally bombed a sovereign nation that had not attacked the U.S., while still claiming to the world that he was “negotiating” with them. Any countries considering “a deal” with Trump saw exactly what happened, just as NATO watched in horror as Trump embraced the aggressor in Ukraine. Fallout from our allies’ inability to trust the U.S. will take years to assess, and will fall equally on successor administrations.

Even though Iran has accepted a ceasefire, query what that ceasefire is worth to the U.S., given that Iran will now likely develop weapons-grade uranium with a vengeance. We don’t know when it will happen or what form it will take, but the most dangerous fallout of all is that, following U.S. attacks, Iran now sees the development of nuclear weapons as existential. Iran’s clerical rulers have long chanted “Death to America,” and Iran’s foreign minister now warns of “everlasting consequences.”

If Iran now rushes to build nuclear weapons with its enriched uranium, which U.S. intelligence confirmed had not already happened before the bombing, Trump’s blunder could become existential for both the U.S. and Israel. That’s why diplomacy was crucial. But Trump couldn’t resist being the big bully on the playground, and he still can’t. What purpose does it serve, what diplomacy does it advance, for Trump to contradict his own administration, and even his “America first” base, squawking about regime change on social media?

Just as sending the U.S. military into LA risks escalating the violence there, Trump’s regime-change rhetoric, coming on the heels of his dubious bombing campaign, virtually guarantees that Iran will hit back. It may take months, it may be direct or through its terrorist proxies, but Iran will eventually retaliate and escalate, which is why no U.S. president before Trump ordered the strike he did.

On Sunday, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session, where Secretary-General António Guterres described the U.S. bombing as a “perilous turn” in global affairs. Although allies and foes alike urge an immediate return to diplomacy, the prerequisites for any successful outcome—trust and credibility—have dissipated, possibly for good. If Trump has “totally annihilated” anything, it’s the antecedent trust, goodwill, and appearance of fair dealing required for diplomacy to succeed.

This is not a wish for diplomacy or the ceasefire to fail, but a realistic assessment of the likelihood of its long-term success.