Trump’s bombing achieved less than Obama’s nuclear accord

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The 12-day war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran is over. Now the questions begin over what it did - and did not - accomplish.

The good news is that both Israel and the United States showed they can bombard Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets at will - in the case of U.S. Operation Midnight Hammer, dispatching B-2 stealth bombers on an around-the-world flight to drop 14 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs. Iran appears weaker and more vulnerable than ever. The aura of power it had used to intimidate its neighbors has been broken.

The U.S. military action might also put China, North Korea, Russia and other hostile regimes on notice not to mess with President Donald Trump. He is not averse to using military power as long as he avoids lengthy entanglements.

The further good news - related to the first - is that Iran’s response was so ineffectual. This consisted of shooting long-range ballistic missiles at Israel and a few shorter-range missiles at the U.S. al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. U.S. forces, warned in advance by Tehran, suffered no casualties, while Israel had 3,000 wounded and 28 dead. That’s a terrible toll, but far less than worst-case estimates when Israel launched Operation Rising Lion.

If that’s the extent of the Iranian retaliation, Israel and the United States can breathe a sigh of relief. But we should keep in mind that sometimes revenge can take time to arrive. In 1986, the Reagan administration congratulated itself for its success in bombing Libya, to punish Moammar Gaddafi for his support of terrorism, but two years later Libyan agents blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. We need to remain on high alert for similar acts of Iranian terrorism in the future, given that nation’s decades-long track record as the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

Trump deserves credit for forcing Israel and Iran to declare a ceasefire on Tuesday, ensuring that this war did not drag on endlessly. But how much damage was done to the Iranian nuclear program remains a matter of intense debate. In announcing on Saturday night the airstrikes long before any bomb damage assessment had been conducted, Trump said that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” He is sticking to that claim with his trademark vehemence even as evidence throws it into growing doubt.

On Tuesday, multiple media organizations reported on a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report that estimated that the United States had set back the Iranian program by only a few months and that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium had been moved before the attacks, with its current whereabouts unknown. Preliminary Israeli intelligence assessments conclude that the damage to the Iranian nuclear weapons program was more extensive - enough to set back the program by several years.

The Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank founded by weapons expert David Albright, leaned closer to the Israeli assessment, writing that “Israel’s and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack.” But even Albright’s report conceded: “There are residuals such as stocks of 60 percent, 20 percent, and 3-5 percent enriched uranium and the centrifuges manufactured but not yet installed at Natanz or Fordow. These non-destroyed parts pose a threat as they can be used in the future to produce weapon-grade uranium.” So the Iranian program was not destroyed but merely degraded - perhaps severely.

One former U.S. defense official warned me that Iran’s response to the attacks may have been “so lame” because the mullahs could be considering using what remains of their nuclear material and centrifuge capacity to try to dash for a crude nuclear bomb. While it would be difficult and time-consuming for Iran to produce a nuclear warhead to fit atop a missile, it would be much faster and easier to explode a crude device in a test that would get the world’s attention.

That’s what North Korea did in its first nuclear test in 2006. The nuclear device that North Korea exploded was small and unsophisticated, but the test was successful enough for North Korea to be considered a nuclear weapons state - making it unlikely that the United States would risk a preventative attack on its nuclear facilities.

If Iran were to now continue its nuclear program underground - literally and figuratively - there would be another relevant precedent for such a move: In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. But rather than ending his nuclear program, Saddam Hussein accelerated it - and it was not discovered by the world and stopped until the Gulf War of 1991. If Saddam hadn’t invaded Kuwait, Iraq might have had a nuclear weapon by the mid-1990s.

History teaches that it is nearly impossible to eradicate a nuclear program by air power alone. Failing a ground invasion - something that no one is contemplating in the case of Iran - the only viable option to guarantee denuclearization is a binding international agreement. The irony is that President Barack Obama had negotiated just such an agreement with Iran in 2015 - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - but Trump foolishly pulled out of it in 2018, leading Iran to accelerate its enrichment of uranium.

The Iran nuclear deal had its flaws. But as long as Iran abided by it - and there were international inspections to ensure that it did - Tehran was prevented from moving toward a nuclear weapon for at least 15 years. Even the most optimistic scenarios of the damage achieved by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes suggest that they delayed the Iranian program by a much, much shorter length of time.

Trump promised in 2018 to negotiate a far tougher accord with Iran. He never has, and he now claims it is no longer necessary. He is wrong. At the end of the day, no matter how precisely bombs strike their “aim points,” there is simply no substitute for diplomacy in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.