There has been much commentary about the U.S. airstrike last weekend against three key nuclear sites deep inside Iran: Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan. The attack—President Donald Trump’s boldest use of military force to date—was designed to stunt if not destroy Iran’s nuclear program and bring Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table in a much weaker position. As the dust settles over the American missile and bomb craters, questions continue to swirl about the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes and their impact on the region more broadly.
How far back did the U.S. strikes set Iran’s nuclear program?
Operation Midnight Hammer was designed to destroy and degrade the key bottleneck in Iran’s nuclear program: its enrichment capacity, including its most advanced and large-scale centrifuge cascades. The lion’s share of Iran’s operational IR-6 centrifuges were believed to be housed in the three facilities struck by the United States last weekend. Iran’s near nine-hundred pound stockpile of 60 percent enriched Uranium, which can fit in the equivalence of the trunks of ten cars, remains unaccounted for. But this stockpile will be of little use for any Iranian nuclear weapons program in the near term if their enrichment capabilities were wiped out.
The battle damage assessment remains murky. Though Trump has repeatedly claimed the country’s nuclear program is “completely and totally obliterated,” comprehensive assessments of the damage take time. Neither the United States nor Israel has released a final assessment on the strikes’ consequences for the nuclear program. It’s still early days. Earlier this week, a preliminary classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, estimated that the program had been delayed, albeit no more than six months. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said that the centrifuges at Fordow are “no longer operational” and that there was “no escaping significant physical damage.” U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan “Razin” Caine also emphasized that the United States had every reason to believe the strike was successful, while adding that the defense department had been preparing to destroy Fordow for more than a decade.
At a minimum, it’s reasonable to assume that Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon was materially impacted by Operation Midnight Hammer. But it is unclear at this point what it means to dismantle Iran’s entire nuclear weapon program and whether that could be achieved kinetically, at arms length. The question then becomes how much time the strikes will buy the United States and others—and if it does buy meaningful time, what we do with it.
What can we make of Iran’s response so far, and what are the prospects for further escalation?
Iran’s immediate response to the U.S. strikes over the weekend has been muted thus far. On Monday, it fired a wave of missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar—the forward headquarters of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and the largest U.S. base in the Middle East where some ten thousand troops are typically stationed. It’s safe to say the attack on the most heavily fortified U.S. military target within reach of Iran was telegraphed and calibrated to allow room for de-escalation while also allowing the regime to save face with domestic constituencies. A limited response so far is unsurprising, especially given the state of Iran’s military enterprise.
For starters, the Iranian regime’s command and control structure has been degraded significantly, with Israel having killed much of its high command, including the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Quds force, as well as the top brass of the IRGC Aerospace Force, which oversaw Iran’s ballistic missile and drone offensives against Israel. Moreover, Iran’s ballistic missile inventories are shrinking at a rapid clip due to its attacks on Israel and Israeli air strikes on Iranian missile launchers and depots. Over the last several months, Israel has also weakened the power projection capabilities of its regional proxies, namely Hamas and Hezbollah, which it had counted on to function as a “sword of damascus” against Israel during prior skirmishes. Israel has also destroyed much of Iran's air defense network, rendering it extremely vulnerable in “tit-for-tat” escalatory scenarios. Then there is the question of who to trust, which has the potential to slow down strategic decision-making. As Karim Sadjadpour, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, put it, the Ayatollah is effectively leading a “Swiss cheese regime, which has been thoroughly penetrated by Israeli intelligence.”
Yet, Iran’s woes shouldn’t be cause for complacency. CENTCOM Deputy Commander Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a hearing on Tuesday that Iran may be “weakened” and “degraded” but it still retains “considerable tactical capability.” In the region, there are still some forty thousand U.S. troops stationed across the region in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates that may well be subject to physical and cyber threats. In the wake of the assassination of Quds Force commander General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, Iran similarly fired missiles at U.S. bases but stopped short of causing any loss of life. But in January 2024, an Iranian-backed militia killed three U.S. servicemembers and injured dozens at Tower 22 in northeast Jordan in a drone attack. Then, there is the risk of global acts of terror, putting the United States and others on watch. Iran can take its time to respond. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya took more than two years to retaliate for the United States’ 1986 attack on Libya with the downing of PanAm Flight 103.
Beyond military action, there is an economic card Iran might play: closing the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical oil chokepoint. One-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Though Iran could take steps to try to cut off the rest of the world’s access to oil and gas, an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz would have far-reaching implications beyond the United States and risks not just failing but backfiring—rallying the world around decisive actions to get oil flowing again. Moreover, the United States has become far more insulated since the 1973 oil embargo and even the Iraq War in 2003. In 2003, the United States’ net import of petroleum and refined products was about 14 barrels per person. Today, the United States exports 2.5 barrels per person, not to mention its status as the largest seller of liquified natural gas. China, which is the world’s top importer of Iranian oil, would have suffered far more financial pain in the event of a cut-off from their oil. Iran likely hasn’t forgotten the lessons it learned in 1988, during Operation Praying Mantis, when the United States killed dozens of Iranian sailors and sank a top of the line Iranian frigate in response to the IRGC’s mining of the Strait of Hormuz.
How will these strikes reverberate around the Middle East?
While Arab countries publicly called for diplomacy, there is private admiration of the Israelis and the United States. As CFR Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa studies Steven Cook noted earlier this week, the statements after the U.S. strikes weren’t a criticism of the strikes so much as they were concerned about what comes next, including the potential for retaliation on their territories: “[D]amage to [Iranians’] ability to be a menace to the region is a good thing. But at the same time, there’s a lot of concern about blowback on them, and what the retaliation will look like, and will it affect—will it affect them? Will there be damage to Dubai? Will there be damage to Dammam?”
Perhaps the more interesting question is what will happen to the geopolitical balance of power in the region. Key partners in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have sought closer relations and even defense guarantees from the United States in part to address the Iranian threat. If, in a best case scenario, Iran’s nuclear program is dramatically weakened, their ballistic missile capabilities are severely diminished, and their proxies remain shells of their former selves, the question is whether these countries remain interested in deepening their ties to the United States or feel a greater freedom of movement to pursue a more independent geopolitical course. The answer might lie in part in what else the United States has to offer them, such as cooperation on technology and AI. (See last week’s This World This Week.)
The same can be asked of China and Russia’s roles going forward. Iran is a key supplier of drones and other munitions for Russia’s war in Ukraine, while China imports roughly 90 percent of all Iranian oil exports. Though both China and Russia have called for peace, received high-level Iranian officials in recent days, and condemned the United States’ strikes, it appears neither have taken concrete actions to support Iran. Is the Axis of Autocracies more brittle and shallow than some imagined? Or might China and Russia step into the fold to provide Iran with sorely needed economic and military assistance? I lean more towards the former.
What are the prospects for diplomacy moving forward?
Potential future talks face a number of headwinds, including the perception that Trump has a tendency to change his mind and even cancel existing deals, including his own. He withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. Now, as Ray Takeyh, senior fellow for Middle East studies, put it, there’s a “narrative in Iran today of IAEA perfidy.” In addition to the withdrawal from the JCPOA, he added, “There’s a lot of discussion that the whole Steve Witkoff negotiations were a ruse and they were designed to essentially establish their predicate for action.” There’s also deep-rooted skepticism of the IAEA and its director general Grossi which have been peddled by Iranian political leaders like former Speaker of the Parliament of Iran Ali Larijani. At the grass-roots level, regime leadership will also need to contend with the tricky optics of reengaging in negotiations with the “great satan” who just made mincemeat of Iran’s sovereignty and national defense aspirations.
Still, given Iran’s weakened negotiating position and the regime’s general inclination to prioritize its own survival, the prospects for a new deal are not trivial. Much may depend on the Trump Administration’s willingness to provide sanctions relief and other economic considerations to the regime. And, of course, the question remains whether such a deal prohibits or simply limits Iran’s enrichment program and if the latter, how much different or better it would be than the JCPOA.
Alternatively, Iran could decide that the United States’ strikes demand it use all means necessary to cross the nuclear threshold and reestablish some measure of deterrence. Their capabilities for doing so might be very much in question, but by no means zero. Take North Korea going underground as a case in point. Despite widespread condemnation and sanctions, Kim Jong Un’s regime forged ahead with its weapons program, conducted six nuclear tests, and today is thought to possess dozens of operational nuclear weapons.
Iran may also take note of an example much closer to home. The Ayatollah is old enough to remember Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s response should India get the bomb: “We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.” Bhutto certainly made good on his vow.
All of this is to say that, as important as the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran nuclear assets have been, what comes next could be equally important in determining the security and geopolitics of the Middle East going forward.
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