US strikes against Iran raise more questions than answers

 

By James M. Dorsey

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The United States bunker-busting air strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites raise more questions than answers, fuelling a war of narratives as the world waits for what comes next.

This weekend, President Donald J. Trump celebrated the strikes as “a spectacular military success” in televised remarks, even if it was unclear what that means and despite US intelligence and, by implication, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) assessments that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump said the targeted sites – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan – had been “completely and totally obliterated.”  

Taking a more cautious attitude without contradicting Mr. Trump, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine said damage assessment showed the targeted sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction” but would not confirm that they had been “obliterated.”

Instead of listening to the US intelligence community and the international agency, Mr. Trump echoed Israeli claims that Iran was months, if not weeks, away from possessing nuclear weapons, raising the question about who the president listens to, the US intelligence community or Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested that he shared Mr. Netanyahu’s desire for regime change, hours after his Vice President JD Vance and Secretaries of State and Defence Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, insisted that the US strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, not the country’s regime.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, his social media platform.

Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of regime change could shape how Iran responds to the US strikes.

While the administration declared that, at the very least, the strikes had significantly set back Iran’s nuclear programmes, Iranian officials asserted that the United States had failed to destroy Iran’s uranium stockpile, including some 410 kilogrammes enriched to 60 per cent purity.

The officials said authorities moved the uranium to safe locations in advance of the US strikes.

Major General Mohsen Rezaie

"All enriched materials…are in secure locations. We will come out of this war with our hands full,” said Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a member of Iran’s National Security Council and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  

It was unclear when Iran moved its stockpile to a secure location. Iranian officials said the United States had informed Iran that it would hit the country’s nuclear sites hours before the strikes to make clear that it did not seek a prolonged confrontation with Iran.

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in Iran haven’t been able to verify the location of the country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week.

The inspectors last saw Iran’s uranium inventory — enough to make 10 nuclear warheads --- stored underground at the targeted Isfahan atomic facility.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Tariq Rauf, the former head of the IAEA’s nuclear verification policy, said, “The US bombings have complicated tracking Iranian uranium.”

Mr. Rauf cautioned that “it will now be very difficult for the IAEA to establish a material balance for the nearly 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, especially the nearly 410 kilograms of 60 per cent enriched uranium.”

In addition to not knowing where Iran’s stockpile is, inspectors will no longer be able to rely on environmental sampling to detect the potential diversion of uranium.

“Now that sites have been bombed and all classes of materials have been scattered everywhere, the IAEA will never again be able to use environmental sampling. Particles of every isotopic description have infinite half-lives for forensic purposes, and it will be impossible to sort out their origin,” said Robert Kelley, who led inspections of Iraq and Libya as an IAEA director.

Even so, Iran’s problem is that it can’t be certain how secure the locations are where the uranium has supposedly been moved to.

“These will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or US strikes,” said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

If the death on Friday of an unidentified Iranian nuclear scientist, an alleged weaponisation specialist. is anything to go by, Iran’s uranium may be less secure than the country would like the world to believe.

Israel said it killed the scientist in a safe house where he was hiding to escape assassination. He was the 10th nuclear expert assassinated by Israel in the last ten days.

Military analysts note that, depending on how deep underground Iran’s nuclear facilities are, the US may need several bombings to destroy them at the risk of being sucked into an expanding regional conflagration.

Mr. Trump increased that risk by publicly supporting regime change.

In hindsight, Mr. Trump may have anticipated his expression of support when he suggested in his televised remarks that the United States will launch further attacks against Iran if it refuses to return to nuclear negotiations on his terms, which Iran has repeatedly rejected.

Despite Mr. Trump’s escalatory rhetoric, Iran is likely to calibrate its response to the US air strikes carefully.

While it is difficult to see Iran forgoing its perceived right to retaliate, it is likely to want to ensure that it does so in a manner that keeps the door open to negotiations.

A restrained Iranian response would also cater to advice proffered by its partners, China and Russia, who do not want to see an all-out regional war and are likely to primarily offer Iran political and diplomatic support rather than military participation.

Russia and China are sure also to have advised Iran not to make good on threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major global trade artery through which much of the world’s oil and gas supplies flow, because this would increase the risk of further intervention in the war by the United States and other Western powers.

Even so, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a former Russian president, suggested that his country could help Iran build nuclear weapons.

“The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” Mr. Medvedev, widely viewed as a gadfly, said.

When asked about Mr. Medvedev’s comment, US Vice President Vance was dismissive.

“I don’t know that that guy speaks for President Putin or the Russian government,” Mr. Vance said, noting that Russia has “been very consistent that they don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament voted to close the Strait less than 24 hours after the US strikes in a decision that has yet to be approved by Iran’s National Security Council.

The vote heightened concerns across the Middle East about the fallout from the US strikes.

Gulf states await potential Iranian retaliation against US military and diplomatic facilities on their soil. In addition, they will also be worrying about the possible environmental fallout of the US bunker-busting bombs taking out Iranian nuclear facilities.

That has not stopped Jordan and Saudi Arabia, despite their expressions of concern, from helping Israel intercept Iranian missiles fired at the Jewish state.

Sirens regularly warn residents of the Jordanian capital, Amman, about overflying missiles. Jordan frequently intercepts, at least, some of those missiles, while Saudi Arabia has reportedly allowed Israel to shoot missiles down in its airspace.

Turkey and Iraq dread an expected influx of Iranian refugees if hostilities continue or, even worse, expand. Together with Pakistan, Iraq, and Azerbaijan, Turkey worries about the potential spillover effect of potential unrest among ethnic Iranian minorities like the Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and Baloch that straddle their borders.

For their part, Egyptians fear that war is inevitable amid concern that Israel could attempt to drive Gaza’s Palestinian population out of the Strip and into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The question on everybody’s mind is: Will an expanding conflict envelop the Middle East, and if so, can it be contained to the region?

The answer will likely depend on Iran’s response to the US strikes and whether it strikes at US, Israeli, and/or Jewish targets elsewhere in the world or lets Israel carry the brunt of its retaliation.

Channel News Asia published an earlier version of this story.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.