Over the weekend, the United States bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran. Iran has been considered a political risk to America since the 1979 revolution, and President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that it cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. The strikes mark yet another attempt in a long-running US strategy to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
But whether Trump’s strikes will achieve his stated aim of destroying Iran’s nuclear program is unclear. It doesn’t help that his plan around the attacks has felt haphazard. Trump said Iran had a two-week deadline before he would authorize a strike — then attacked only two days later. Even just before the bombs were dropped Trump was telling the press that targeting nuclear facilities may not even be an option, saying “I may or I may not do it.” Trump stated in his 2024 election victory speech that he was “not going to start a war,” yet he has now hinted on social media that regime change could be next.
Trump could be accused of simply being chaotic here. But this is a deliberate strategy. Trump has a history of being intentionally unpredictable when it comes to foreign policy, known as the unpredictability doctrine. Drawing from his experiences in his previous career in business, Trump says being predictable is bad. When the other side doesn’t know what you are going to do, you are in control. His plan is also about creating uncertainty. You make your opponent unsure of what they are facing and unable to make decisions in response, leaving you to take the advantage.
But foreign policy is not business, and a strategy that works with corporations may backfire on the world stage. While nobody knows exactly what will happen next, what can we work out about the implications of Trump’s actions now given what has worked (or hasn’t) before in terms of nuclear arms control?
Strikes now, problems later
Countries may consider military strikes on nuclear facilities when they feel that the other side won’t cooperate in negotiations. For example, Israel, believing that Iraq would never be serious about a diplomatic solution, bombed an Iraqi enrichment facility at Osirak in 1981 to stymie the nuclear program. The preventive attack did serious damage to the facility, and Israel claimed they had disrupted Iraq’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon by destroying the facility before it became functional. A similar aim was likely a factor in Trump’s thinking on targeting Iran.
Yet military strikes are rarely as clear-cut as they look on paper. They may seem like a simple solution to a dangerous problem by stopping a nuclear program in its tracks. They also deliver results faster than diplomatic options, which can take a lot of time and do not come with any guarantee of a solution.
But while Trump may like to think that a few strikes will do the job, using bombs now could create problems for any future US strategy toward Iran — whatever that strategy turns out to be.
The first problem is that we do not yet know whether the strikes were entirely successful in taking out the targets. To work properly, a military attack should completely destroy the target facilities to ensure they cannot work. If a facility is even partially functioning after a strike, that state can still run a nuclear program, albeit a reduced one. While Iraq did not go on to develop nuclear weapons after Osirak, it still had sufficient resources to maintain a plan. In fact, some experts argue that the attack only encouraged Iraq to pursue this.
While there is evidence of physical damage after Trump’s strikes, whether this is enough damage to undermine Iran’s nuclear capability remains uncertain. Trump is saying that the three targeted facilities in Iran were “obliterated.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also reported that the attacks have “devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” Iran, however, has downplayed the extent of the destruction. The fact that Trump’s former aide, Steve Bannon, can’t even pronounce the name of one of the facilities, Fordow, properly doesn’t exactly build confidence in the administration’s assessment.
It’s also unclear how many nuclear facilities are left outside of the three that were bombed. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently cautioned that there could be clandestine facilities that we just do not know about. Trump himself has claimed there are “many targets left,” which indicates that Iran still has at least part of an operational program.
And now, any future efforts by Iran would also likely be even more secretive and underground, making it more difficult to detect and target in potential future strikes.
Even if the US has destabilized the nuclear plan, Iran can still rebuild. In 2010, America tried to disrupt the Iranian program in a cyberattack using a computer worm called Stuxnet against the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. The virus caused the reactors there to slow down and crash. The attack did a lot of damage but — as the current situation shows — Iran was able to continue the program.
So it’s possible that the recent bombings could slow down Iran’s progress, but it won’t eliminate the overall and long-term risks. It also will not affect Iran’s ability to retaliate with conventional weapons.
A second problem is that the bombings could now attract such a retaliation. Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has already said that the US “must receive a response to their aggression.” Iran has also publicly stated that it is considering a “proportionate” responses. This could potentially look like a repeat of Iran’s response to the 2020 assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in which Trump ordered a drone strike against the Iranian leader. Trump said the killing was to prevent a terrorist attack against a US embassy. Responding to Soleimani’s death, Iran launched a retaliatory attack against two US air bases in Iraq.
The incentive for Iran to retaliate is even greater this time. The US has not just taken out a key leadership figure but directly threatened the state itself and its nuclear program at a time of intense conflict with Israel — and the US, where Trump is seen as having entered the war as a result of the weekend strikes. There is now an even higher chance that Iran will fight back this time because it is already fighting, and it could use that war as an opportunity to target the US.
Upping the game by using bombs will also encourage escalation by the US. This may be exactly what Trump wants. Yet it is also the case that the situation makes it difficult for him to do anything else. If Iran doesn’t show signs of giving in and continues its nuclear ambitions, Trump may be forced to take further action. If he doesn’t, it would look like Iran has won, even with three facilities destroyed.
Diplomatic options still on the table?
So what’s next?
While suggesting that regime change could be in the cards, Trump has also talked about a diplomatic solution, and this is what many other states would prefer. Using diplomatic negotiations instead of bombs has proven effective — at least partially — in the past, as seen by international agreements to control the global proliferation of nuclear weapons, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Negotiations have also convinced countries, such as Ukraine, to give up their nuclear arsenals. Trump has even relied on diplomacy with states that he has tense relationships with, like North Korea, although some analysts question how effective this has been, not least given that North Korea still has nuclear weapons.
If Trump is serious about diplomacy, then the bombing will make this difficult at best, impossible at worst. Trump was clearly hoping that the attacks might soften Iran up for negotiations if he decided to go down that road. He said the attacks should be taken as a sign for Iran to “make peace” or face “far greater” attacks in the future. This strategy isn’t working so far.
When Trump initially threatened strikes, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that such a move would “undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage” to US-Iran relations. Iran has now repeated this line, saying the impact of the strikes will have “everlasting consequences.” There’s no evidence that Iran would allow itself to be forced into negotiating through threats alone. The solution in Ukraine worked because it was based on a peaceful and collaborative process, not because it was done under duress.
It is also worth remembering — as Iran certainly will — that Trump is the one responsible for the failure of a previous diplomatic solution. He was the one who walked away from a nuclear deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This agreement — between Iran and the US, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and Germany — aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear ambitions through demands, such as getting rid of its medium-enriched uranium and not build heavy-water reactors. In return, these countries would reduce their economic sanctions on Iran.
Trump said this was a “one-sided deal” that “didn’t bring peace, and it never will” and pulled out in 2018. Whatever misgivings he had about the deal, it means the US will find it hard to introduce new diplomatic measures now. Trump’s perceived lack of commitment reduces the chance that Iran would be willing to talk cooperatively with the US and its allies. While Iran was clearly willing to work diplomatically before, why would it now sit down with someone it feels can’t be trusted to stick to an agreed solution? This is especially the case when that someone has just bombed them and is now talking about regime change.
Whatever Trump has planned next, his decision to carry out strikes has radically limited both his options and the chances of de-escalation. Based on what we’ve seen in previous attempts at arms control and conflict resolution, Trump may have unnecessarily inflamed the conflict, left the US open to Iranian retaliation, ruined the option of future diplomacy, and provoked Iran into developing a nuclear weapon. This is a strategy that has a high chance of exploding at some point — if not now in terms of an Iranian escalation, then in the future in the form of a revitalized nuclear program.
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