Monday briefing: Four ways Iran could retaliate to US bombing of nuclear sites

The Guardian

4 hours ago

Good morning. After he ordered the attacks on Iranian nuclear sites that constituted the US's entry into Israel's war against Iran, Donald Trump insisted that he wanted peace 'quickly', and that the alternative would be 'tragedy for Iran' and 'far greater' attacks in future. His vice-president, JD Vance, said that the US was 'not at war with Iran' and that 'we do not want to protract this'. But in Tehran, with Trump now also talking of regime change, the conclusion appears to be that there is no choice but to respond.
Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said that 'The Americans must receive a response to their aggression'. And foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said that the US strikes will have 'everlasting consequences'. While there is little doubt that Iran's military capacities have been severely degraded since Israel's attacks on 13 June, the country retains immediate options – and may now be more set on a path to nuclear weapons than it was before this began.
So what might an Iranian reaction look like – and would it be calibrated to avoid escalation, or to punish Trump as aggressively as possible? For today's newsletter, I spoke to Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran expert and editor of Amwaj.media, about the scenarios that might unfold. Here are the headlines.
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Since Israel's first attack on Iran ten days ago, Israeli officials believe that Iran has used up between a third and half of its ballistic missile stock. Senior military leaders have been killed, air defence systems have been crippled, key command centres have been destroyed, and now the US has dealt a devastating blow to Iran's nuclear programme.
But it would be a mistake to think Iran's leadership is therefore bound to accept the 'unconditional surrender' Trump has demanded. 'They are pragmatic people,' Mohammad Ali Shabani said. 'They prefer to live to fight another day. But there is a question with Trump about whether, if you exact no cost, you increase the risk of further bombing. There will be a desire to show that Israel has not obliterated their retaliatory capacity, and to show a domestic audience that they are not defeated.'
Here are some of the options that might be considered.
The 'proportionate' response | Military action that aims to avoid escalation
'The feeling may be that they have to choose a kinetic response,' Shabani said. 'That's a fancy way of saying 'bomb something'.'
In this analysis, considerations will include whether any Iranian lives were taken by the US attack – none have yet been reported – and the fact it was executed by submarines and bombers that did not depart from US bases in the region. 'It was a bloodless attack, and since we know that these sites have largely been evacuated, there may be a desire to do the same thing.'
Options Shabani thinks may be on the table include an attack on US interests in Iraq – 'it's so close, it has limited air defences, and there is unlikely to be unmanageable blowback from the Iraqi government'. There could also be strikes on the headquarters of the US fifth fleet in Bahrain and US military installations in the tri-border area between Iraq, Jordan, and Syria.
'The Bahrain naval complex is a big symbol of US power, but it appears to have largely been evacuated, except of essential personnel,' Shabani said. 'And Bahrain has neither fully normalised relations with Iran nor explicitly condemned the American attack. So they may decide to say, you hit a symbol of our power, we hit a symbol of your power, and alert the US to get their remaining personnel out of there first.' That approach might reflect Amwaj.media's reporting of claims in Tehran that the US gave advanced notice of the attack and said it did not seek an all-out confrontation.
Whatever the move ultimately is, Shabani said, he would expect it to be more severe than the action taken after Trump ordered the assassination of the senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020. That involved the first direct ballistic missile strike on US interests since the second world war, against two bases in Iraq.
'That was in response to an attack that did not violate Iran's territory, because Soleimani was in Iraq,' Shabani said. 'Iran will see such a significant series of attacks on its soil this time as a step up the escalatory ladder. So they could decide to target several places at once.' It might also seek to link continuing attacks on Israel to the US's actions.
Decisions on those measures will be taken by the Iranian supreme national security council, which is headed by the president and includes cabinet ministers, military leaders, and representatives of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
'It's important to emphasise that Iran is a state, with institutions and a bureaucracy,' Shabani said. 'This is not a personality cult. Khamenei is very keen to signal that those institutions are still functioning.'
The diplomatic response | Inspectors expelled, no immediate return to talks
Alongside any military action, 'Iran may well decide to end foreign inspections and downgrade the level of IAEA monitoring that they allow,' Shabani said.
It is likely that in the end Iran and the United States will return to some form of talks. But having been so weakened, it appears improbable Iran will return to a solely diplomatic route without taking some kind of 'kinetic' action first. As Reza Salehi, a conservative political analyst in Tehran, told the New York Times: 'The big challenge that we face this week is that if we go to the negotiating table, the other side will have more and newer demands, such as our defense abilities, and that will make things complicated.'
Meanwhile, the domestic optics of accepting the US and Israeli red lines – sending all uranium out of the country for enrichment – in the face of such a heavy military blow appear likely to be unacceptable to senior Iranian leaders. 'The notion that they would be willing to be seen as crawling to the negotiating table is not realistic,' Shabani said. 'They need to be able to save face first in order to make a deal.'
The wildcard response | Deterrence through unpredictability
'Iran's actions have so far been a little bit predictable – rational,' Shabani said. 'But part of deterrence is your opponent not being able to calculate what you're going to do.'
That might point to an asymmetric response that aims to cause significant economic damage to the west, he said. 'One of the extreme options would be to target maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea' – two major routes for western shipping and the transit of oil supplies.
'If you close the strait of Hormuz, that's 20% of the world's seaborne oil supplies off the market overnight. But it's problematic because it's also an artery for Iran, which hasn't stopped exporting oil. It's a last resort option, and I don't know if they're there yet.' Iran's parliament yesterday approved the closure of the Hormuz shipping channel, but the decision ultimately rests with the supreme national security council. (Here's a useful explainer on the shipping route's significance.)
Some have also warned that Iran could once again turn to sponsoring terror attacks or hostage-taking. But, Shabani said, 'they have recently tended to prefer to act alone, and to act directly – to say, we're not hiding our responsibility. Doing that could even signal weakness, that they do not have other options at their disposal.'
Cyber-attacks might be a more realistic option. But it is similarly hard to see Iran targeting US critical infrastructure – partly because doing so would be seen as escalatory, partly because the US's defences are robust. 'But I wouldn't remove it completely from the table,' Shabani said. 'If there are bloodless non-critical systems that they can get to – a bank rather than water supplies – that could be possible.'
The nuclear option | Following the North Korean example
If expelling IAEA inspectors would be a symbolic gesture of limited practical weight given the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities, a much more significant long-term approach may easily follow: working to increase enrichment, and to actively pursue a nuclear weapon outside any international oversight. (Ironically, that is a decision that US intelligence agencies recently assessed that Iran had not yet taken.)
'We reported a senior source in Iran saying that 'most' of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is intact,' Shabani said. 'That would not be surprising: they have already said they have moved parts of the stockpile to protect it.'
Iran has also claimed it has another secret and secure enrichment site, though there has been no reporting yet of western intelligence assessments of the truth of that claim. Meanwhile, while Trump claimed that Iran's enrichment facilities were 'totally obliterated', US officials have reportedly concluded that in fact the heavily fortified Fordo site was seriously damaged, but not destroyed.
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The consequences of this path might not be felt for years – but it would be foolhardy to assume that Iran is suddenly incapable of pursuing it, Shabani said. 'People have a tendency to think about Iran's nuclear capabilities as a bunch of buildings. But you cannot bomb away knowledge held by thousands of scientists or 40 years of work that easily.'
Events of the last few weeks appear to have had a significant impact on public opinion on nuclear weapons, Shabani added. 'I'm not a pollster, but I can tell you that what I hear anecdotally from many of my Iranian contacts and acquaintances is that they need a deterrent to stop this happening in the future. The mood seems to have shifted from support of enrichment to support of nuclear weapons themselves. People look at North Korea's nuclear weapons and see that nobody is attacking North Korea. That lesson is being internalised.'
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'Iran vows revenge after US bombs its key nuclear sites,' is the splash on the Guardian today, referring to the unprecedented attacks on Iran that dominated headlines across the UK.
'Iran vows revenge on US,' says the Times, while the Mirror says 'Stop now' and the Metro: 'Hammered.'
In the i, the headline is 'Trump pushes Middle East to the brink.' The FT runs with 'Trump declares victory with massive air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities,' and the Mail, 'Fears UK will now face Iran terror backlash.'
'Starmer warns of 'escalation' risk as UK terror threat rises,' writes the Express, and finally the Telegraph with: 'Revenge would be Iran's worst mistake, warns US.'
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