Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, and a very happy birthday to our brilliant, infallible, and fun editor, Jenn Williams, who lets us be ourselves while also repeatedly saving us from ourselves. Feel free to email her dog toy recommendations; your favorite episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race; and of course, praise for your SitRep authors.
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: the debate continues over the success of U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Europe begins the hard part of boosting defense spending, and the debate over U.S. war powers intensifies.
Trump’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ Moment?
Former U.S. President George W. Bush infamously gave a speech in 2003 in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner on an aircraft carrier, declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq—prematurely implying that the U.S. war in the country was over. Is President Donald Trump now in danger of repeating history with Iran’s nuclear program?
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear sites, contending the mission was a “LEGENDARY” success. But a leaked preliminary intelligence assessment suggests that the operation set Iran’s nuclear program back by just a few months.
The Trump administration has launched an aggressive campaign to control the narrative surrounding the impact of the U.S. strikes in the wake of the leak, raging against the media in the process.
Meanwhile, the administration has left crucial questions unanswered—particularly regarding the location of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium. Satellite imagery showed trucks lined up near the Fordow nuclear facility before the U.S. strikes, and some experts have suggested that they could’ve been used to move the uranium. Iran has also signaled that it moved the uranium prior to the strikes.
As long as that stockpile exists, experts warn against declaring Iran’s nuclear program dead. Ultimately, nuclear experts continue to caution against reaching concrete conclusions about the state of the nuclear program mere days after the U.S. strikes.
What the Trump administration is saying. The administration is accusing the media of making too much of the leaked intelligence report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, emphasizing that it’s an early assessment and a “low confidence report.”
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ripped into the media at a press conference on Wednesday at the NATO summit in The Hague, with the president describing outlets that reported on the leaked intelligence as “scum.”
In a Pentagon press briefing on Thursday that was also attended by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Hegseth said the leak was politically motivated. Hegseth also accused the media of “hunting for scandals” and failing to recognize how the U.S. strikes helped lay the groundwork for peace in the region.
Yet Hegseth dodged questions on whether Iran may have moved its stockpile of highly enriched uranium prior to the U.S. strikes—and personally attacked Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin for asking about it. In a vague response to another question on the matter, Hegseth said, “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise.” In what appeared to be a reference to the Fordow nuclear facility, Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday that “nothing was taken out.”
It’s worth noting that Caine—who on Sunday cautioned that it would take time for a full assessment of the damage from the strikes—would not say whether Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated” when asked during Thursday’s briefing.
What experts are saying. The three Iranian nuclear sites targeted by the United States “were certainly damaged and may be inoperable for months to come, but it’s a bridge too far to say Iran’s nuclear program was completely obliterated,” Kelsey Davenport, the director of nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, told SitRep. “The Trump administration claimed total victory far too soon,” she said. “The threat still persists.”
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency—the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog—said on Thursday that Fordow’s centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium, are “no longer operational.” But Grossi added that it would be “too much” to claim that the recent U.S. and Israeli strikes had “wiped out” Iran’s nuclear program.
Davenport said that nobody is going to know for certain how long Iran’s program was set back “until inspectors can [get] back into these facilities.”
“We may never know where all of the 60 percent enriched uranium is. Some of it could have been destroyed. Some of it may be buried. Some of it could have been diverted. It’s critically important for IAEA inspectors to get back into Iran’s sites and to start assessing the damage. But even then, there’s a real risk that material is going to remain unaccounted for,” Davenport said.
European governments were also reportedly given an early intelligence assessment suggesting that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile is largely intact.
In many ways, asking whether Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed is the wrong question—because knowledge cannot be bombed away, nor can nuclear ambitions. And there are now concerns that the United States and Israel bombing Iran’s facilities may have led Iran to conclude that it’s time to weaponize.
Davenport emphasized the need for a “diplomatic path forward” in order to “prevent a nuclear-armed Iran in the long run,” which will require Washington to set “consistent, realistic objectives for what’s possible in an agreement.”
Trump said on Wednesday that his administration was set to hold talks with Iran next week (though the White House said on Thursday that no meeting has been scheduled “as of now”). Yet Trump also suggested that an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program wasn’t necessary because the United States “blew it up.” On Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. bombings “did not achieve anything.”
On the Button
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
The morning after. As you’ve no doubt seen from our coverage this week, NATO and its Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s mission of ingratiating themselves to Trump with a promise to dramatically increase defense spending proved largely successful. The U.S. president appeared to leave this week’s NATO summit happy and as committed to the alliance as he’s ever been.
That has prompted a sense of relief from Sen. Chris Coons, one of two Democratic lawmakers (along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen) who traveled to the summit to represent the U.S. Congress.
“This week’s NATO Summit was further proof that America First cannot mean America Alone,” Coons said in an emailed statement to SitRep. “I am confident that the United States will retain its long-standing bipartisan commitment to NATO, and I look forward to continuing to support strategic investments in the Alliance that will prepare us for the future of warfare.”
Trump may be satisfied, and everyone else may be relieved, but for many of NATO’s European members, the hard part begins now. Not only do they have to actually spend the money that they’ve promised, but doing so comes with some risky economic trade-offs, as our editor in chief, Ravi Agrawal, wrote in a new piece. Agrawal argues that spending more on tanks and missiles could lead to uncomfortable sacrifices on Europe’s social welfare system that could hurt European leaders at the polls.
We heard as much from Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky on Wednesday. “This will be a very difficult domestic discussion in every country,” he told SitRep at the end of the summit, but for European citizens, it’s a question of “how we want to enjoy our prosperity … if we are not able to secure our countries, our way of life.”
FP Insiders can also watch Ravi and John’s debrief of the NATO summit for more details on how it all went down and a sense of The Hague vibes.
Plane English. Speaking of defense spending, the United Kingdom announced this week that it plans to buy 12 new F-35A fighter jets from the United States, giving the British military the ability to drop nuclear bombs from the air for the first time since it retired its nuclear-capable aircraft at the end of the Cold War.
All of the United Kingdom’s current nuclear weapons are seaborne, capable of being delivered only through its fleet of submarines. The F-35As will be deployed as part of NATO’s nuclear mission, the U.K. government added.
Even while it waits for new jets, the country is missing one of its existing ones. A British F-35B has been stuck at an airport in the Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram for nearly two weeks now, having been forced to make an emergency landing due to inclement weather on its way back from a joint exercise with the Indian Navy. “The aircraft has subsequently developed an engineering issue whilst on the ground,” the British Deputy High Commission in Bengaluru said in a statement to Indian news channel NDTV, with the timeline for its return home still unclear.
Snapshot
Hot Mic
“When Donald Trump illegally bombed Iran, there was no imminent threat to the U.S. or our troops—that’s exactly the kind of military strike that needs congressional authorization,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told SitRep in an emailed statement.
As our colleague Christina Lu reported, several Democratic lawmakers—and even some Republicans—have criticized the Trump administration’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities last Saturday without seeking approval from Congress, arguing that the move is in contravention of the 1973 War Powers Act, which only allows the president to order military attacks in three cases: (1) a declaration of war, (2) after receiving “specific statutory authorization” from Congress, or (3) a “national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
That’s not Trump’s only deployment of the U.S. military that Duckworth is lambasting. The Illinois senator introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at curbing the U.S. president’s ability to use soldiers against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. The “Military in Law Enforcement Accountability Act” would restrict military support for law enforcement except in emergency circumstances such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, requiring congressional approval for any domestic deployment longer than two weeks.
Duckworth’s legislation was in response to Trump’s decision to send the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles earlier this month to quell protests against his deportation program. “The unjustified, un-American deployment of our military into our cities is pulling resources and attention away from our Armed Forces’ core missions to the detriment of our national security,” Duckworth told SitRep. “This egregious abuse of our military did not start in California—it’s been a plan since Trump’s first day in office.”
Put On Your Radar
July 1: Denmark assumes the presidency of the Council of the European Union, assigned on a rotating basis.
July 2: Argentina hosts a leaders’ summit of the South American trade bloc Mercosur.
July 4: U.S. Independence Day.
July 6: Brazil hosts the BRICS summit, which Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to skip.
July 9: U.S. reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries set to take effect after Trump’s 90-day pause expires.
By the Numbers
Sixty-four—the percentage of Australians who say that they don’t really trust the United States “to act responsibly in the world,” according to a new survey by the Lowy Institute think tank, which polled a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 Australians. It’s the first time since the survey began in 2006 that the ratio has been more negative than positive, with an even 32-32 split on the degree of trust between “not very much” and “not at all.” Trust in China, meanwhile, rose slightly compared to last year but is still only at 20 percent.
Quote of the Week
“In the family, you have different roles—one is cooking, the other one is cleaning the kitchen, one is heating the sauna, and the other one is bringing the wood.”
—Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur to SitRep, describing the shared burden of defense spending within NATO.
This Week’s Most Read
- Trump Is Just Trying to Save Face by Howard W. French
- What Regime Change Means in Iran by Arash Azizi
- How Trump Could Lose This War by Daniel Byman
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
We had an internal debate over how long NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s quote calling Trump “daddy” would continue to have legs in this frenetic news cycle, but it looks like Trump himself liked it enough to keep it going. The White House shared a recap video on Thursday of Trump’s highlights from the Hague summit with the caption “DADDY’S HOME” and set to the tune of R&B singer Usher’s 2009 hit of the same name.
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