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New York Times
13 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: Israel and Iran Claim Victory as Cease-Fire Takes Hold
Reporters photographing a display for 'Midnight Hammer,' the name of the American operation to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, during a news conference on Sunday. A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country's nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings. The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded. Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months. The report also said that much of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations. Some Israeli officials said they also believed that the Iranian government had maintained small covert enrichment facilities so it could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities. Other officials noted that the report found that the three nuclear sites — Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — had suffered moderate to severe damage, with the facility at Natanz damaged the most. It is not clear whether the Iranians will try to rebuild the programs. Former officials said that if Iran tried to quickly develop a bomb, it would be a relatively small and crude device. A miniaturized warhead would be far more difficult to produce, and the extent of damage to that more advanced research is not clear. Current and former military officials had cautioned before the strike that any effort to destroy the Fordo facility, which is buried more than 250 feet under a mountain, would probably require waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots. American warplanes did hit the same spots at least twice on Saturday. B-2s dropped 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs — often referred to as 'bunker busters' — on Fordo, and six aboveground entry craters are now visible, according to Brian Carter, the Middle East portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute. But many military bomb experts believed that more than one day of strikes would be needed to complete the job. The initial damage assessment suggests that President Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear facilities were 'obliterated' was overstated. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday, and a group of House Democrats issued a statement demanding that their chamber be briefed as well. Since the strikes, Mr. Trump has complained to advisers repeatedly about news reports that have questioned how much damage was done, said people with knowledge of the comments. He has also closely watched the public statements of other officials when they are asked about the damage to the nuclear facilities, they said. In a statement on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reiterated Mr. Trump's early assessment. 'Based on everything we have seen — and I've seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons,' he said. 'Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.' Officials cautioned that the five-page classified report was only an initial assessment, and that others would follow as more information was collected and as Iran examined the three sites. One official said that the reports people in the administration had been shown were 'mixed' but that more assessments were yet to be done. But the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly. Officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings of the report remain classified. The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said it was 'flat-out wrong.' 'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program,' she said in a statement. 'Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.' Elements of the intelligence report were reported earlier by CNN. The strikes badly damaged the electrical system at Fordo, officials said. It is not clear how long it will take Iran to gain access to the underground buildings, repair the electrical systems and reinstall equipment that was moved. Image A satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies of the Fordo nuclear site. Credit... Maxar Technologies, via Associated Press There is no question that the bombing campaign 'badly, badly damaged' the three sites, Mr. Carter said. But initial Israeli damage assessments have also raised questions about the effectiveness of the strikes. Israeli defense officials said they had also collected evidence that the underground facilities at Fordo were not destroyed. Before the strike, the U.S. military gave officials a range of possibilities for how much the attack could set back the Iranian program. Those ranged from a few months on the low end to years on the higher end. . Some officials cautioned that such estimates are imprecise, and that it is impossible to know how long Iran would exactly take to rebuild, if it chose to do so. Despite claims of the sites' obliteration by Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been more careful in describing the attack's effects. 'This operation was designed to severely degrade Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure,' General Caine said that at the Sunday news conference. The final battle damage assessment for the military operation against Iran, General Caine said on Sunday, standing next to Mr. Hegseth, was still to come. He said the initial assessment showed that all three sites 'sustained severe damage and destruction.' General Caine added that it was 'way too early' to assess how much of Iran's nuclear program remained. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of Central Command, said in an interview, that he had 'a lot of confidence in the weapons systems used.' But he added: 'I'm not surprised that elements survived. That's why you do battle damage assessments, because everything can go as planned but there are still other factors.' At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Democrats also struck a more cautionary note. 'We still await final battle damage assessments,' said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. Military officials had said that to do more significant damage to the underground sites, they would have to be hit with multiple strikes. But Mr. Trump announced he would stop the strikes after approving the first wave. U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded before the strikes that Iran had not made the decision to make a nuclear weapon, but possessed enough enriched uranium that if it decided to make a bomb, it could do so relatively quickly. While intelligence officials had predicted that a strike on Fordo or other nuclear facilities by the United States could prompt Iran to make a bomb, U.S. officials said they do not know yet if Iran would do so. Representatives of the Defense Intelligence Agency did not respond to requests for comment. David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Miami Herald
16 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Was Trump's attack on Iran legal? Experts weigh in on US and international law
President Donald Trump's decision to bomb Iran has reignited a decades-long debate over the legality of unilateral military action. In response to the June 21 attack — during which U.S. stealth bombers struck three Iranian nuclear sites — Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, labeled it 'not constitutional.' Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, called it 'illegal' and dangerous. However, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said Trump 'made the right call, and did what he needed to do.' Numerous other elected Republicans echoed this statement. McClatchy News has asked legal experts to clear the air and weigh in on whether the president's actions were lawful under both U.S. and international law. US law Whether or not the president has the power to independently launch a military attack has been a hotly contested and largely unresolved issue for years. 'It's been a longstanding situation of competing claims of authority between the Congress and the president,' Robert Goldman, a law professor at the American University Washington College of Law, told McClatchy News. The debate stems from the U.S. Constitution, which divides wartime powers between both the legislative and the executive branch, Goldman said. On the one hand, Article I grants Congress the power to declare war, while Article II designates the president commander in chief of the armed forces. The consensus among legal scholars is that the authors of the Constitution 'intended to separate the power to initiate a war from the power to run a war once it has begun, leaving the president able only to repel sudden attacks without first going to Congress,' experts told the New York Times. In practice, though, presidents of both parties have frequently initiated military campaigns without the approval of Congress — and often with little pushback. 'The U.S. has been involved in numerous armed conflicts or wars since World War II,' Goldman said. 'But the last time the U.S. Congress formally declared war was when Franklin Roosevelt, in 1942, came to them after the attack on Pearl Harbour.' While Congress has not declared war in eight decades, it has, in some cases, granted a president's request to use military force against specific targets through what is called an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). For example, in 2001, following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lawmakers passed an AUMF, permitting President George W. Bush to use force against 'nations, organizations or persons' that took part in the attacks. But, in multiple other instances, presidents have used military force without an AUMF, including in Kosovo in 1999, Libya in 2011, in Syria in 2014 — and now in Iran under Trump. 'This is something that's gone on for ages,' Goldman said. 'This is not something that is unique to this particular administration.' International law On the other hand, under international law, the rules are more cut and dry, experts said. 'By attacking Iran, the U.S. is breaking international law — there is no doubt about that,' Ian Hurd, a political science professor at Northwestern University, told McClatchy News. 'It is illegal to use military force against another country,' Hurd said. 'This rule is the centerpiece of international law, written into the United Nations Charter at the end of World War II.' Under the U.N. Charter, an attack on another nation is only permitted under a few circumstances — none of which apply to Trump's bombing of Iran. Firstly, Article 51 of the Charter recognizes the right of a state to respond to an armed attack for purposes of self defense. 'Quite clearly,' Goldman said, 'we were not subject to an armed attack by Iran.' Some legal experts also argue that anticipatory self defense — under which a state has not been attacked, but determines that a foreign attack is imminent — is legal under international law. 'Obviously, you couldn't argue anticipatory self-defense because…Iran doesn't have any weapons platforms capable of hitting the continental U.S.,' Goldman said. Lastly, the charter permits the use of force against a state if it has been authorized by the U.N. Security Council — as it did during the First Gulf War in 1990. Such an authorization was not obtained for Trump's bombing of Iran. 'So I would say the situation is fairly straightforward as to the legality,' Goldman concluded. 'It may have been done politically for a reasonable reason, but that is distinct from international law.' The U.S., though, is hardly alone in breaking international law. In recent years, numerous conflicts have violated the U.N. Charter, according to Amnesty International, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's war in Gaza.
Chicago Tribune
19 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
A whirlwind 48 hours: How Trump's Israel-Iran ceasefire agreement came together
WASHINGTON — In a 48-hour whirlwind, President Donald Trump veered from elated to indignant to triumphant as his fragile Israel-Iran ceasefire agreement came together, teetered toward collapse and ultimately coalesced. Trump, as he worked to seal the deal, publicly harangued the Israelis and Iranians with a level of pique that's notable even for a commander-in-chief who isn't shy about letting the world know what he thinks. The effort was helped along as his aides, and Qatari allies, sensed an opening after what they saw as a half-hearted, face-saving measure by Tehran on Monday to retaliate against the U.S. for strikes against three key nuclear sites. And it didn't hurt that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after 12 days of bombing, could tell the Israeli public that Iran's nuclear program had been diminished 'This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't, and never will!' Trump declared in a social media post announcing the ceasefire. The agreement began taking shape early Sunday morning, soon after the U.S. military carried out blistering strikes on Iranian nuclear sites that U.S. defense officials said have set back Tehran's nuclear program. Trump directed his team to get Netanyahu on the phone. The president told Netanyahu not to expect further U.S. offensive military action, according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the sensitive diplomatic talks. The U.S. president made the case that it was time to stop the war and return to diplomatic negotiations with Iran. Trump also noted that the U.S. had removed any imminent threat posed by Iran, according to the official. For his part, Netanyahu listened to Trump's argument as Israel was nearing its own objectives with Iran, the official said. Netanyahu did not enthusiastically agree, but understood Trump's stance that the U.S. had no desire for additional military involvement. Around the same time, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff spoke directly with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, telling him to come back to the bargaining table because Iran had seen what the U.S. military could do and that it was capable of doing much more, the official said. Witkoff stressed that the U.S. wanted peace — and Iran should, too. Less than 48 hours later, Trump took to his social media platform to announce that a 'Complete and Total CEASEFIRE' had been achieved. The ceasefire was based solely on the end of military hostilities, rather than on additional conditions about Iran's nuclear program or its economic interests. Trump was acting on the belief that Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons had been crippled. But as Trump spoke with confidence about the coming cease-fire, the Israelis and Iranians were notably quiet — neither side publicly commented on what Trump described as a deal that would be phased in over the coming hours. Araghchi spoke out first, acknowledging the wheels were in motion for a deal, but stopping short of saying Iran had signed off. 'As of now, there is NO 'agreement' on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations,' Araghchi posted on X. 'However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards.' Not long before Trump's announcement, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to social media to declare that Iran wouldn't surrender. It was unclear what role Khamenei, the ultimate authority in the Islamic Republic's theocracy, had in the deal. And Netanyahu was silent. He would wait more than eight hours after Trump's announcement to confirm that Israel had accepted the ceasefire and that it had achieved its war goals against Iran. Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said ceasefire efforts gained steam after Iran's retaliatory attack on a major U.S. base in the emirate on Monday evening. The Iranians fired 14 missiles at the base — with U.S. and Qatari defense systems knocking down 13. One of the missiles, according to Trump, was ''set free' because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction.' Trump also claimed the Iranians gave the U.S. and Qatar a heads up, allowing the troops to take shelter and the Qataris to clear their typically busy airspace. Iran's restrained direct response to the U.S. bombardment suggested to Trump administration officials that Iran — battered by Israel's 12-day assault — and its degraded proxy groups, including Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Yemen-based Houthis, didn't have the wherewithal to expand the fight. Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, had a 'long call' with Trump soon after the Iranian attack on the Al-Ubeid military installation, according to the Qatari prime minister. 'There was an opportunity during this communication to announce a full ceasefire on all fronts, and U.S. authorities asked Qatar to contact Iranian authorities to know how prepared they are for a ceasefire,' the prime minister said. The president soon got back in touch with Netanyahu to secure his commitment to end the hostilities, officials said. The prime minister agreed to the ceasefire, as long as there were no further attacks by Iran, the officials said. From there, things moved quickly. Vice President JD Vance was making an appearance on Fox News' 'Special Report' on Monday evening when Trump took to social media to announce the ceasefire deal had been reached and would go into effect over the coming day. The vice president appeared surprised when host Bret Baier told him that Trump had announced a deal had been reached. 'We were actually working on that just as I left the White House to come over here,' Vance said. 'So that's good news that the president was able to get that across the finish line.' But after Trump's announcement, the attacks kept coming. Iran launched a series of strikes on Israel after 4 a.m. local time Tuesday in Tehran, the time that Iran's foreign minister had said Iran would cease its attacks if Israel ended their airstrikes. And the Israeli prime minister's office confirmed that Israel launched a major assault hours ahead of the ceasefire's start, hitting central Tehran. 'We attacked forcefully in the heart of Tehran, hitting regime targets and killing hundreds of Basij and Iranian security forces,' the statement read. Iranian media confirmed nine casualties in the northern Gilan province. 'Four residential buildings were completely destroyed and several neighboring houses were damaged in the blasts.' Fars News Agency reported. Trump, who was scheduled to depart the White House early Tuesday to fly to the Netherlands for the NATO summit, was livid. His frustration was palpable as he spoke to reporters on the White House South Lawn. 'I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran, either, but I'm really unhappy with Israel going out this morning,' Trump said. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f—- they're doing.' Minutes later, he took to his Truth Social platform to send a warning to Israel. 'ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION,' Trump posted. 'BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!' Trump climbed aboard Air Force One and was soon on the phone with Netanyahu. He did not mince words with the Israeli leader, according to one of the White House officials. Trump was 'exceptionally firm and direct' with Netanyahu 'about what needed to happen to sustain the ceasefire.' Netanyahu got the message. His office confirmed that the Israeli leader held off tougher action after the appeal from Trump and 'refrained from additional attacks.' After the call, Trump once again took to social media to declare the ceasefire was 'in effect. ' 'ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran,' Trump declared. 'All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly 'Plane Wave' to Iran, Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!' The president went on to spend a considerable chunk of his flight celebrating what his administration is calling a signal achievement. 'It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!'
