June 13, 2025
The real debate has never been about what to do with Iran’s nuclear program. It’s always been about what to do with the regime.
For others,
the problem is the very existence of the Islamic Republic itself, which
they sincerely believe is incapable of changing its foreign policy and
is building weapons to annihilate Israel, not deter it. For these
people, any diplomatic solution is a false peace that only strengthens
Iran, because an illicit nuclear program is a broadly acceptable reason
to maintain sanctions that they hope will cripple an Iranian regime they
view as irredeemable.
There is no way to resolve that difference in opinion. And never has
it been clearer than today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu is in the latter camp. These strikes weren’t primarily
targeted at nuclear facilities, but at the top military leaders of the
Islamic Republic. Israel isn’t trying to knock out Iran’s centrifuges;
it’s trying to knock out the regime itself.
Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003,
despite its vociferous denials. When that program was revealed in 2002,
the U.S. intelligence community believed, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei halted it. (“Halt” is the word the intelligence community used, but suspended or paused is a more natural description.)
Iran agreed to the so-called Iran nuclear deal in 2015. Iran, according to both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.S. intelligence community, complied with the terms of that agreement. This compliance continued even after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal, during his first term, in 2018, until May 2019.
The Biden administration did not reenter the agreement and talks
dragged out. Despite the breakdown, the U.S. intelligence community
believes Iran’s nuclear weapons program remains suspended, but also that there is growing pressure on the supreme leader to resume the program.
Iran has been gradually reducing its cooperation with the IAEA since
2019, especially in recent months. Iran’s reduced cooperation put the
director general in the position of stating
just this week that, without resolution of the outstanding issues, the
IAEA would “not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s
nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.”
Although the United States and Iran have been in talks in Oman, with the U.S. even offering Iran a watered-down version of the previous nuclear deal, those talks dragged past a 60-day deadline set by the Trump administration.
The IAEA Board of Governors—who are just ambassadors from various
member states of the IAEA, including the United States—voted 19-3 with
11 abstentions that Iran’s actions “constitute non-compliance with its
obligations” under its safeguards agreement. The Iranians were,
obviously, not psyched about this.
Iran, in response, notified the IAEA that it had constructed a third
underground enrichment site and would soon be installing new centrifuges
there. The notification to the IAEA is a “design information
questionnaire” (or DIQ) that indicates Iran intended to put the new
facility under IAEA safeguards, as are all of its other known facilities
with nuclear material.
Then Israel struck—and at an unexpected set of targets.
While the initial wave of Israel’s airstrikes was widely described—including
by Netanyahu himself—as an attack against Iran’s nuclear and missile
facilities, the only nuclear facility that Netanyahu mentioned in his
speech was the large enrichment facility at Natanz.
For years the consensus has been that Israel probably can’t
meaningfully eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, largely because the most
important elements are safely buried deep underground at places like
Natanz and Fordow. Getting at those facilities would require much more
powerful weapons of the sort that only the United States possesses.
The Iranians also told
the IAEA that while Natanz was targeted, other sites with nuclear
material were operating normally. The strike on Natanz is the only
strike on a nuclear facility that my colleagues and I at the Middlebury
Institute have been able to verify with open-source information so far.
Satellite images seem to show that Israel targeted a small number of
above-ground buildings at Natanz, including the Pilot Fuel Enrichment
Plant and buildings associated with the power supply.
The loss of those buildings will interfere with operations at the
site, but it is unlikely to destroy many centrifuges. Israel did not
strike the underground facility at Fordow on the first day, where Iran
is enriching material to 60 percent, although that will presumably
change. Netanyahu has promised continued strikes, but at this point it
doesn’t seem like Israel is attempting more than a minimal attack on the
nuclear infrastructure, just enough to be able to characterize the
strike as an act of preemptive self-defense.
What the first wave does seem to have accomplished is to kill a lot
of senior Iranian military officials. Several nuclear scientists were reportedly killed
as well, but the strikes were far more sweeping than that. The Israelis
seem to have struck the residences of Iran’s leadership, reportedly killing
Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces; Hossein
Salami, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
(IRGC); Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander in chief of the armed forces;
Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC’s ballistic missile unit; and Ali
Shamkhani, who was leading nuclear talks with the United States.
One reason that many hawkish Israelis and their Washington fanboys
opposed the nuclear deal was precisely because it might work. Resolving
the nuclear issue would have removed some sanctions on the regime. This
initial wave of attacks isn’t about the nuclear threat; it’s about using
the nuclear threat to justify an attempt to topple the regime.
Netanyahu essentially admitted this, telling Iranians: “Our fight is
with the brutal dictatorship that has oppressed you for 46 years. I
believe that the day of your liberation is near.”
Focusing on the political goals for the strike helps explain why
Netanyahu took this step now. His speech made the degree to which the
nuclear issue is window dressing clear. He claimed that “Iran has
produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs. Nine.” This
is an outright falsehood: The most recent IAEA report confirms that
Iran has not enriched uranium above 60 percent U-235.
Weapons-grade is 90 percent. Netanyahu also claimed, “In recent months,
Iran is taking steps … to weaponize this enriched uranium.” That’s
probably also untrue as the Defense Intelligence Agency, as recently as
May, stated
that “Iran senior leaders probably have not decided to restart its
pre-2003 nuclear weapons program, but since April 2025, Iranian
officials have threatened to revisit their nuclear doctrine if its
nuclear facilities were attacked.”
Netanyahu himself said that Iran might be able to build a nuclear
weapon in a year or even months, something he has been saying for
decades, even before he dragged out a cartoon bomb at the U.N. General Assembly in 2012.
So why is Netanyahu acting now? First, he has a compliant partner in
the Trump administration, which doesn’t seek to be directly involved but
also isn’t interested in restraining him. Netanyahu seems to have given
Trump his 60 days to reach a deal, but not a day more.
Then there’s the domestic politics. As has been evident throughout
the military operation in Gaza, an ongoing security crisis is an
essential element of Netanyahu’s strategy for prolonging his hold on
political power and delaying his verdict for corruption.
If Israel succeeds in toppling the Islamic regime in Tehran, the
strike will have been worth it. But if Israel doesn’t—and honestly,
regime change by airstrike alone has a pretty lousy track record, from
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1986 to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1991 and
after or Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 1999—Iran will retain a
residual nuclear capability. Israel’s national security advisor has already admitted as much. What then?
The answer from the Israelis, which I don’t believe, is that maybe Iran will then make a deal with Trump
to disarm itself. It seems more likely to me that Iran will follow
North Korea’s example, withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty and finally getting around to building that nuclear weapon. It
seems very unlikely that either Russia or China will support additional
sanctions on Iran for doing so, given what has transpired, nor will they
enforce existing sanctions. Russia, after all, is a major customer for
Iran’s military drones, and China buys a lot of Iranian oil.
We don’t fully know why Khamenei halted Iran’s nuclear weapons
program in 2003 or why he has stuck with this approach for so long.
Clearly, some people in Iran wanted a bomb. Others, though, it seems did
not. Until now, the nuclear doves have prevailed. After this strike,
though, I imagine those debates are going to look very different. For
one thing, there will be a lot of new faces around the table. For
another, everyone will take note of what happened to the people who
aren’t around anymore, and they’ll ask themselves whether Israel might
have been so bold if Iran had nuclear weapons or if Israel did not.
If the regime does not fall, then Israel will have to do all this
over again and again. Even if the strike significantly damages Iran’s
nuclear program, Tehran can simply reconstitute it. When I asked one
Israeli friend about the problem of Iran picking up the pieces and
starting over, he compared it to “mowing the grass”—a comparison I
didn’t find very compelling at the time. But having watched the carnage
in Gaza followed by Netanyahu’s speech telling Israel’s soldiers and
citizens to prepare for a protracted conflict, I realize endless carnage
may suit Netanyahu and his government just fine.