On 21 June, the US air force and navy bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, thus becoming directly involved in a military conflict started when Israel struck key military and nuclear facilities in Iran eight days earlier. Since then, president Donald Trump has been ever more adamant that Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “completely and totally obliterated”, and that the ceasefire agreed on 24 June would bring “tremendous LOVE, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY” to the region in perpetuity.
A week on, the ceasefire still holds, but questions over the strikes’ long-term consequences are mounting. CNN has reported US intelligence assessments that the bombing did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear programme.
The regime in Tehran, meanwhile, has struck a note of defiance, with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claiming his country had “dealt a severe slap to the face of America” with a missile attack on a US base in nearby Qatar. Which begs the question: did Operation Midnight Hammer weaken Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or will it embolden its leadership to pursue them in the long term?
How damaged are Iran’s military capabilities?
The intense fighting between Israel and Iran – now often referred to as the “12-day war” – exposed the Islamic Republic’s air defences, showing it was not able to defend itself as effectively against aerial assaults as it has previously claimed.
The American strike on the three nuclear facilities – at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – was undoubtedly effective. “Most serious analysts think that the damage of the US strikes was very, very serious, and it’s hard to imagine that Iran still has a credible nuclear weapons programme in place that has somehow eluded intelligence,” said Patrick Wintour.
That is not the same as “obliteration”, however – significantly so. Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that while American bombers had “severely damaged” Iranian facilities, “one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there”, and Tehran could begin weaponising uranium again in “a matter of months”.
“Even if Iran just has a couple of dozen centrifuges out of tens of thousands left, it could purify its uranium stockpiles within about three months,” said Patrick. “That’s the problem with a military solution and no diplomatic strategy behind it – it would have to be a total wipeout to solve the problem.”
Last week, Iran’s parliament voted unanimously to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA, and the message that Tehran does not want anyone to have a close look at the wreckage was underlined by a menacing article in an Iranian newspaper, claiming Grossi was an Israeli spy who should be executed. “They cannot have access to our site,” Iran’s UN ambassador Amir-Saeid Iravani said. “Our assessment is that they have not done their jobs.”
Until the nuclear inspectorate is allowed access to what remains of the facilities, Patrick said, “we are driving blind” – which, at the moment, could actually be not just in Iran’s but also Trump’s interest. “Iran wants to have nuclear ambiguity for now”, he added. For the US president, meanwhile, the lack of empirical evidence has allowed him to claim an emphatic military victory: “It has allowed his assessment of the strikes’ impact to become harder and harder.”
How isolated is Iran diplomatically?
In recent months, Iran’s foreign minister has invested some effort trying to convey to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that Tehran is not some rogue bellicose state but a mature diplomatic player in the region. “The war has undone that,” said Patrick. “And that’s the case even though those wealthy Gulf states don’t publicly support what the US has done, and even bemoan its short sightedness in private.”
The 12-day war and its aftermath have also shown up little return for Iran’s diplomatic efforts in Europe. Germany’s new chancellor, conservative Friedrich Merz, praised Israel’s air strikes on the Islamic Republic, saying it was “doing the dirty work for all of us”, and later added there was “no reason” to criticise America’s attack. Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, backed the strikes and only warned mildly of a “risk of escalation” in the Middle East.
“What will trouble Tehran most is that it hasn’t managed to leverage the disagreements between Trump and the European Union,” said Patrick. “The Iranians had hoped that Europe would be much more condemnatory of the strikes.”
Is the regime also weakened domestically?
In the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer, some Maga acolytes on social media called on the Iranian people to rise up against the regime. Given the social and economic situation in the west Asian republic, this might sound like a realistic demand: unemployment and poverty rates are high, inflation at almost 40%, in part due to the state’s self-punishingly high military spending. It was only three years ago that the country saw civil unrest and mass protests against the regime, triggered by the death in police custody of the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.
Yet Israeli and American air strikes, with a reported death toll of more than 900 lives, have also shored up support for the government. “The regime is trying to galvanise what happened, and there has been a rallying-around-the-flag effect”, Patrick said. “Even critical voices in the diaspora have been mindful of alienating ordinary Iranians.” Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah who has been one of the leading figures of the pro-democracy movement, has endorsed calls for a civil uprising but has appeared isolated.
Instead of pro-democracy marches, Tehran has seen the regime parade the coffins of the “martyred” military chiefs and nuclear scientists who died in the strikes to state funerals.
The regime has also further tightened its grip on civil liberties, turning on alleged traitors from within. “After the strikes, the Iranian opposition called on the regime to mark a fresh start and release political prisoners”, says Patrick. In fact, the opposite happened.” During the 12-day war, six Iranians were executed on alleged charges of collaborating with Israel. “It is clear that a new wave of intense repression has begun, more severe than ever before”, the daughter of one political prisoner told Guardian reporters.
Prioritising military over social spending might become a harder political sell in the wake of the war, but then there is only so much political-selling that authoritarian regimes need to do while they have the electorate’s hands tied behind their backs. “In truth, Iran’s loathsome regime didn’t even come close to falling”, said foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall in his analysis.
What does this mean for the ceasefire?
The truce between Israel and Iran is volatile. “The situation is very unstable, and anything could kick it off,” said Patrick. The list of unpredictable “anythings” is long: American security agencies have warned of a looming threat of Tehran-backed; US-based “sleeper cells” could be called in for retaliatory attacks; and Iran’s top Shia cleric has issued a fatwa for Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to be made to “regret their words and mistakes”.
Analysts are concerned about the lack of a political programme to keep the ceasefire in place. Trump has said he is “not offering Iran anything”, while the Iranian side has claimed that the US president wants to return to negotiations. In an interview with the BBC on Monday, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, said his country would only be open to such talks if the US were to rule out further strikes during the process.
But as long as Trump’s intelligence assessment of his victory remains the same, Patrick reckoned there was also considerable pressure to keep the ceasefire in place. “If it were to end, the next stage could only be regime change, and that would take Trump into ideologically difficult territory.”
