The outcome of President Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites remains far murkier than the president’s claim to have “obliterated” them.
“If the deeper reaches of Fordow survive, Iran is able to enrich, and there’s no monitoring anymore because Iran suspends any [International Atomic Energy Agency] access, that’s a bad outcome and may require further U.S. action—entanglement of a high-risk nature—if the locations are beyond the reach of [Massive Ordnance Penetrator] bombs,” says Pranay Reddy Vaddi, a senior fellow at the MIT Center for Nuclear Security Policy. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker has more, here.
A quick rewind: Just over a week ago, public disapproval of the president matched a second-term high as millions of Americans demonstrated in protest. (Historian Timothy Snyder on why this is relevant.) On Wednesday, the New York Times reprised reporting that the U.S. intelligence community believed that the Iranian regime had not yet decided to build a nuclear bomb—adding that Tehran “was likely to pivot toward producing a nuclear weapon if the U.S. attacked a main uranium enrichment site.” The Atlantic’s Shane Harris has an even fuller tick-tock of what Trump and intelligence officials have said.
On Saturday night, U.S. forces targeted three of Iran’s main nuclear sites with about 75 precision guided weapons, including 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators on three of Iran’s main nuclear sites. USA Today has an extensive explainer here.
Those details emerged at a Pentagon press conference by SecDef Pete Hegseth—his first since taking office in January—and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who said, “Final battle damage will take some time but an initial battle damage assessment indicates that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” (DOD has a transcript.)
More after the jump…
Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1959, convicted Manhattan Project spy Klaus Fuchs was released after only nine years in prison and allowed to emigrate to East Germany.
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What happens next? Iran says it will close the Strait of Hormuz, a 20-mile-wide passage which carries an estimated 20% of the world’s petroleum and natural gas. If Iran follows through on this threat, it “could upend financial markets and send global energy costs soaring,” the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
But will it? “Many oil traders and energy executives still view the scenario as a scorched-earth tactic and distant possibility. Tanker-tracking firms said Sunday that traffic through the strait was proceeding as usual.”
Closing the strait would likely prompt a surge of U.S. Navy activity, and it’s unclear how long those operations could take, a former Navy intelligence analyst told the Journal.
It could also prompt swift opposition from China, which is Iran’s top customer for its oil exports.
Iran also reportedly promised to carry out terrorist attacks inside U.S. soil, NBC News reported Sunday. “In the days before Trump gave the final order for the attack on the nuclear sites, Iran sent a private message to the president that it would respond to such a move by unleashing terrorist attacks on U.S. soil carried out by sleeper cells operating inside the country, according to two U.S. officials and a person with knowledge of the threat.”
Caveat: “It is not clear that Iran could carry out a terrorist attacks inside the United States,” NBC writes, citing past attempts in which “Tehran has struggled to carry out operations on American soil, using hired hitmen that have botched their missions, according to U.S. authorities.”
As promised several days ago, the Houthis in Yemen announced they will resume attacks on U.S. Navy and commercial ships transiting the Red Sea as an act of solidarity with Iran. “It is impossible to remain silent about any American attack and aggression supporting the Israeli enemy against Iran aimed at enabling the Israeli enemy to control the entire region,” spokesman for the group said in a statement on Sunday.
Rewind: The Iran-backed militants had agreed to a brief ceasefire with the White House after the Pentagon’s short-lived Operation Rough Rider failed to achieve its goals—and cost the U.S. several aircraft lost at sea during evasive maneuvers to avoid Houthi missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea between March and early May.
Notable: That ceasefire excluded Houthi attacks against Israel, which have continued periodically since November 2023, shortly after Hamas attacked Israel and triggered the wider conflagration involving Hamas, Hezbollah and now the state of Iran.
A top Russian propagandist claims several countries are ready to arm Iran with their nuclear warheads. That would be former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who alleged on social media on Sunday morning, “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,”
Developing: U.S. citizens are at increased risk when traveling abroad, the State Department announced in a brief travel advisory posted Sunday.
Also: Expect Iran to retaliate against U.S. networks, according to a Department of Homeland Security bulletin issued Sunday. The notice, scheduled to expire Sept. 22, adds that “hacktivists and Iranian government-affiliated actors routinely target poorly secured U.S. networks and internet-connected devices for disruptive cyber attacks.” Read more at Nextgov.
Analysis: Is an Iranian bomb now more or less likely? It depends on at least a few significant factors, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Sunday evening. According to Pranay Reddy Vaddi, former senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, Iran has at least three options moving forward:
- Accept a deal with zero enrichment and give up any nuclear ambition, which means Israel or the United States can act with impunity against Iran anytime they wish and Iran will be far away from a bomb;
- Ignore diplomacy, try to reconstitute their program in secret. “In this scenario they are running the risks of the U.S. and Israel attacking again, of course… so this only works if they feel confident they can protect their program.” Russia or China could play a role in that assurance;
- Negotiate a deal with the White House that allows for gradual phasing out of enrichment activities. “I don’t see this as likely,” he said.
Wild card: Much now depends on the degree to which China or Russia chooses to intervene on Iran’s behalf, Tucker reports. On the other hand, “the best course of action for the United States now is for Trump to attempt to reconstitute something like the Iran nuclear deal he walked away from in his first term,” two sources said. Continue reading, here.
Among the more bleak forecasts: “One dangerous possibility…is that the Iranians do real damage to American assets or kill a number of U.S. servicepeople, and Trump, confused and enraged, tries to widen his war against a country more than twice the size of Iraq,” former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols argues in The Atlantic.
“Perhaps the most likely outcome, however, is more mixed,” he speculates. “The Iranian program may not be completely destroyed, but if the intelligence was accurate and the bombers hit their targets, Tehran’s nuclear clock has likely been set back years. (This in itself is a good thing; whether it is worth the risks Trump has taken is another question.) The Iranian people will likely rally around the flag and the regime, but the real question is whether that effect will last.”
Another possible knock-on effect: “Other nations might see American planes flying over Iran and think that the North Koreans had the right idea all along: assemble a few crude nuclear weapons as fast as you can to deter further attempts to end your regime,” says Nichols. Read on, here.
Local consideration: “American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran,” Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution argued in The Atlantic Saturday. Consider the following, he writes: “Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial control over the nation’s law enforcement. The Justice Department, the police, ICE agents, and the National Guard apparently answer to him, not to the people or the Constitution. He has neutered Congress by effectively taking control of the power of the purse. And, most relevant in Iran’s case, he is actively and openly turning the U.S. military into his personal army, for use as he sees fit, including as a tool of domestic oppression.”
“Will [Trump] tolerate dissent in wartime?” Kagan asks. “He has been locking people up on flimsier excuses in peacetime…The administration may claim that anti-terrorism laws permit it to violate the rights of American citizens in the same way that it is currently violating the rights of the noncitizens being scooped off the streets by masked men.”
Kagan’s parting thought: “Today, the United States itself is at risk of being turned into a military dictatorship. Its liberal-democratic institutions have all but crumbled. The Founders’ experiment may be coming to an end. War with Iran is likely to hasten its demise.” Read the rest (gift link), here.
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