Editorial: U.S. bombs fall in Iran

Chicago Tribune

4 hours ago

Saturday evening, President Donald Trump announced on social media that the U.S. had dropped 'a full payload of bombs' on Iran's most important nuclear site, Fordow, as well as completing strikes on Natanz and Isfahan.
The stunning action, which came sooner than even close observers anticipated and is without obvious precedent, embroiled the U.S., for better or worse, in the middle of the ongoing war between Israel and Iran. Saturday June 22 turned out to be a historic day with likely far-reaching consequences for the Middle East.
Consider: An American attack unfolded inside Iran.
Many Americans were unnerved by the President's action and understandably so, given the likelihood of an Iranian response, as we write yet unknown.
What should be made of Trump's action? We would have preferred the President had given more time to diplomacy, always preferable to war. His 'two-week' deadline appears to have been a ruse and we prefer that the President of the United States keep his word. And we would have preferred the involvement of Congress.
Our qualms do not mean we believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's oppressive and theocratic Iranian regime, which has fought proxy wars by propping up the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, should be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Nobody wants that to happen, beginning with Israel, of course, but including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and, well, every nation where rational people dominate public discourse.
How close the Iran regime really is to building a nuclear weapon is contested. Those of us with long memories can remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb as far back as 1996. More than 20 years ago, Netanyahu was again saying that Iran was very close to building a bomb that could reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
All this time, Iran has kept insisting its nuclear program is only for peaceful, civilian purposes.
On the other hand, nuclear watchdogs also have consistently raised concerns about the growth of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and Khamenei's regime has not exactly been a model of cooperation. Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said, 'is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent.' That does not constitute evidence of a plan to build a bomb in and of itself, but the higher the level of enrichment, the closer the uranium gets to 90% weapons grade, and Iran's enrichment level is widely viewed by experts as a significant step closer to weapons grade.
For the average American, the truth is not easy to discern even from our own officials. Take U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's testimony to Congress this past March. On the one hand, she said the view of the intelligence community was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.' On the other, she also said Iran was suddenly talking a lot more about nuclear weapons. That might sound vague, but it's actually highly significant, given the regime's hatred of Israel and the battles with the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. It's likely that the intra-Iranian discourse has shifted in the light of Israeli aggression.
As one of the attendees at the American Nuclear Society's conference in Chicago this past week told us, there likely are those within the Iranian program who are more than interested in building a nuclear bomb to protect the regime, even if the majority are scientists interested only in peaceful, civilian uses and either ambivalent or silently hostile toward Khamenei. The question that does not get enough attention is the balance of power.
Some in the latter category, she told us, already have been killed by Israel, much to their colleagues' regret. Some of those in the former category who are still alive thus are most likely newly emboldened. At the time of writing, it was unclear how much Saturday night changed that equation.
No doubt there are Iranian voices speaking in favor of a major response. One can only hope other voices are arguing for caution, not least for the people of Iraq who awoke in fear Sunday morning.
In terms of realpolitik, of course, Israel most wants regime change in Iran. So does the vast majority of the Iranian diaspora, including some we know in Chicago. So does the vast majority of the Iranian people, given Khamenei's repression of women, his stealing of elections, his meeting of dissent with brutal violence, his funding of terror, his denouncement of opposing voices. And that's only the start of the list.
This is not a regime worth defending, and recent progressive attempts to link the situation in Iran with the war in Iraq, ostensibly fought over weapons of mass destruction that did not prove to exist at scale, are illogical. This time around, the question in Iran is more about intent, not the existence or otherwise of weapons. And people's intent can change as circumstances change.
What is worth debating is whether the Israeli attacks will make the end of the Khamenei regime more likely. You could argue the events of the last several days are weakening Khamenei. You could also argue that spring does not arrive when the sky is full of bombs and people are fleeing Tehran as fast as humanly possible.
So where should you stand?
Not with the MAGA isolationists, certainly, who claim that none of this has anything to do with this country, a view widely assumed to be cleaving the MAGA movement in two, which is no bad thing in our view. That's not to say the likes of Tucker Carlson are wrong about the potential costs of a war with Iraq; all wars extract their price and too little stateside attention is being paid in our view to the danger of nuclear contamination, which is rightly front of mind in the Persian Gulf States, even though those states are no fans of the Iranian regime and want it gone. But the horse bolted decades ago when it comes to U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
But we also don't recommending standing with those far leftists who view Iran as benign, its hatred of Israel as overblown and who overlook Khamenei's human rights abuses to fit some anti-capitalist narrative.
When you see the extremes of American political discourse getting into bed together, that's a great moment to leave the bedroom.
What has changed the most, of course, is that the Oct. 7 attacks changed the Israeli mindset vis-a-vis Iran, and that Netanyahu calculated that the Trump administration would be more supportive of the kind of systemic change in the region that Israel now sees as crucial to its security. He was not wrong.
Trump, we all know by now, is a born improviser, which can be dangerous in situations like these.
Some would argue his application of force was necessary if we want to get Iran to halt its nuclear activities. The other view is that actually dropping some massive bomb deep down into the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo will not be worth the cost. Adding to the complexity, arguably the redundancy, of that question is the reality that Israel was not going to stop, whatever the U.S. did or did not do in its support.
One hopeful interpretation is that the U.S. action ends with this move against the nuclear facilities and that the talking now starts again.
This weekend, though, there is reason to worry about the Iranian people, most of whom long for a deal wherein Khamenei and his crew hop a plane and set the Iranian people free. In his social media post, Trump said this was the time for peace. May he be good for his word.