CNN
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President Donald Trump’s onslaught of Iran’s nuclear plants was the most violent moment of his two terms and America’s 46-year showdown with the Islamic Republic.
Flush with the spoils of battle, he already seems to be toying with the idea of regime change.
But the reality of whether Trump truly destroyed Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the consequences of his aggression are far more ambiguous than his bullish claims of victory would suggest.
The president insisted Sunday that the damage to three nuclear sites struck by the US was “monumental.” He posted on social media that “the hits were hard and accurate.”
Round-the-world raids by B-2 stealth bombers out of Missouri using never-before-deployed “bunker-busting” bombs demonstrated the unique reach of the US military and its continued potency despite Trump administration chaos at the Pentagon.
If Trump’s order eradicated Iran’s nuclear program, or set it back years or decades, he could claim a legacy achievement that lifted an existential threat to Israel. If Iranian power is neutered, the Middle East could be transformed.
The president effectively tried to bomb Iran to the negotiating table and to an effective surrender of its capacity to enrich uranium. But it’s a long shot whether humiliation by an enemy Tehran regards as the “Great Satan” will convince it to sue for peace.
And questions are mounting over whether the strikes over the weekend truly “obliterated” all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure as Trump claims. And the president has still not shared the intelligence that convinced him that Iran was “a few weeks away” from building a nuclear weapon — even though US spy agencies assessed it had not yet decided to do so.
‘A big boom and a lot of dust’
It is now vital to establish whether Iran salvaged any enriched nuclear material or even relocated it ahead of the US strikes. If it did, Trump’s bid to eliminate its path to a weapon could instead catalyze a race by Tehran to build a rudimentary device that would leave the world a far more dangerous place.
“Anybody who says that they have any idea whatsoever about whether these raids did anything other than create a big boom and a lot of dust has no idea what they’re talking about,” Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “State of the Union” on Sunday.
In the meantime, everyone is waiting on Iran’s military revenge, with the Middle East on alert for new turmoil — and Americans potentially in the firing line.
Tehran’s decisions will be fateful. A slide into yet another open-ended Middle East war is not inevitable. But history shows that American attempts to reshape the region almost always fail to capitalize on “shock and awe” openings.
Amir-Saeid Iravani, the Islamic Republic’s envoy to the United Nations, said on Sunday that “the timing, nature and the scale of Iran’s proportionate response will be decided by its armed forces.”
There’s growing uncertainty, meanwhile, about the president’s intentions. Vice President JD Vance insisted on Sunday that the US wasn’t at war with Iran or seeking to topple its leaders. But Trump on Sunday evening raised the possibility of mission creep, asking on Truth Social, “Why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” That was likely music to the ears of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The situation inside Iran’s leadership remains opaque. The country was already in a period of transition as the long rule of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei enters its sunset. But Israel’s dismantling of Iran’s regional power by crushing its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and now America’s blow against its nuclear aspirations, could foment unpredictable political forces.
It’s unlikely that any loosening of the clerical regime’s control would result in the more benign leadership that the US and Israel would prefer, and which millions of more moderate Iranians crave. Instead, political upheaval could bring even greater domestic repression. And any signs of state collapse in a nation twice the size of Iraq could send shockwaves throughout the region and across the globe.
America’s latest plunge back into the Middle East is already having profound political reverberations back home.
Top Republicans heaped praise on what they see as Trump’s strength, clarity and daring. But despite his deep bond with his base, some influential right-wing influencers fear he could be driving the MAGA movement into a quagmire.
And a president with autocratic instincts who is severely straining the rule of law and the Constitution and is using his power to punish his perceived enemies has now led the US into a potential new conflict on a hunch without making any case to the public and after ignoring Congress’s power to declare war.
This cascade of uncertainties in the aftermath of Trump’s strikes underline that he gave up total control of this new crisis as soon as US bunker busters dropped on the Fordow nuclear plant.
The resolution of this clash with Iran — a seat of civilization laced with historic, sectarian, religious and political fault lines and a resentment of perceived US colonialism — is unlikely to be as clean as the decision to send a squadron of B-2 bombers around the globe to enforce the impulses of an American strongman.
The next move probably belongs to Iran.
Depending on the state of its military after days of pounding Israeli airstrikes, Tehran has options. It could target vast US military bases and assets in the region. It might close the Strait of Hormuz to spark a global energy crisis. It could send missiles into the oil fields of US allies. It might try to stage terror attacks against US interests in the region, or even in the American homeland.
Each of these options comes with high risks. It may be counterproductive, for instance, for Tehran to close shipping lanes that would slow its own oil exports to China and Russia, its nominal allies.
But each of these steps could also draw Trump deeper into a direct confrontation with Iran and a full-scale war — showing the limits of his ability to control a cycle of escalation.
Vance told ABC News’ “This Week” that if Iran gave up its nuclear program “peacefully” then it would find a willing partner in the US, but if it hit back against US troops, it would be met with “overwhelming force.”
But a president who vowed to avoid new wars sounds increasingly warlike.
In his social media post announcing the strikes on Saturday, Trump called on Iran to negotiate with the US over the complete end of its nuclear program. But his subsequent address to the nation was far more belligerent, warning, “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left.”
The possibility of deepening hostilities therefore seems acute. This is not least because a regime that defined itself for nearly half a century through antipathy to the US may perceive an existential need to show strength.
Still, a resort to all-out warfare by Iran could offer an opening for the US or Israel to move toward a regime decapitation strategy — despite the grave risks of turning Iran into a failed state.
The exact state of Iran’s remaining nuclear capability will be a top issue in the coming days. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was noticeably far less bullish in immediate assessments of the results of Saturday’s raids than Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
New battle damage assessments carried out by surveillance and other forms of intelligence could decide whether Trump may order follow-up raids that could further exacerbate tensions.
Early independent examinations of the aftermath of the strikes suggest that the damage to one of the three key sites — Isfahan, which was targeted by US cruise missiles — was restricted to aboveground structures. Unlike the other two Iranian facilities targeted in the operation, B-2 bombers did not drop massive “bunker-buster” bombs on the Isfahan facility, multiple sources told CNN.
“This is an incomplete strike,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies who has closely reviewed commercial satellite imagery of the strike sites.
“If this is all there is, here’s what left: the entire stockpile of 60% uranium, which was stored at Isfahan in tunnels that are untouched.”
Himes warned that Iran could have moved some enriched uranium out of Fordow before the strikes. “You have got the possibility — and I will stress possibility here — that there’s a lot of highly enriched uranium sitting underneath a hornet-mad regime that has decided that the only way we’re going to forestall this in the future is to actually sprint towards a nuclear weapon,” Himes said.
If that is the case, Trump will have created a threat to the US and Israel that will rumble on for years to come.
“I think the more interesting thing other than retaliation, is reconstitution,” Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “What lessons did the Iranians draw? It’s quite possible they will decide that this never would have happened had they had nuclear weapons. So I think it’s possible their retaliation is relatively modest. And what they really want to do is put themselves on a trajectory where some years down the road, when there’s another crisis, they’re in a different position.”
“So, this may not be quite as neat as we think. This could actually play out not just over weeks and months, but over many years.”
Washington, meanwhile, is already buzzing with a familiar spectacle of officials, experts and pundits all making logical cases for why Trump was right to act, why the mission succeeded and how Iran could best serve its interests with a restrained response.
But as the long list of lost US wars in the late 20th century and 21st century attests, things are almost never so simple.
