Obliteration or Degradation

What difference did the Israeli and US strikes make to Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

Satellite imagery shows a post-strike overview of the Natanz nuclear facility. Visible disruptions in the terrain suggest underground impacts. Satellite image (c) 2025 Maxar Technologies.

You may recall that a few weeks ago there was a war between Israel and Iran. For some two decades this was a war which had been discussed, with some dread, as a likely occasion for massive violence and disruption throughout the region and potential chaos in the international economy.

In the event, as in all wars, there was death and destruction, awful for those involved but not on the scale feared. Iran absorbed twelve days of attacks from Israel, including one overnight contribution from the United States, while offering little by way of a riposte. Its main means of retaliation was missile strikes, and a number of these got through causing damage in Israel, but not enough to avoid the impression of a one-sided affair. Iranian air defences proved to be useless while the various regional militias that would once have been poised to act against Israel had already been neutralised. They ended up as spectators.

Short wars are often the most consequential precisely because they tend to be the most one-sided. On occasion, and this may be the case this time, the importance only becomes clear in retrospect. The durability of the Islamic Republic will depend on its ability to manage the aftermath and continue to claim a great victory. President Trump also claimed a great victory and that the problem that had been vexing the internbational community for so long had now been solved. But had the combination of Israeli and American strikes really eliminated Iran’s nuclear programme or just set it back?

The length of the campaign was determined by what Trump considered his political base would tolerate. NBC reports that US Central Command had a plan that would have involved hitting more sites over several weeks instead of a single night. But Trump did not want to linger and get bogged down in the sort of Middle Eastern War he was pledged to avoid. So he ordered a quick and sharp US contribution after which he declared victory. He then pressured Benjamin Netanyahu, who in contrast to Trump likes to keep his wars going for as long as possible, to do the same.

Netanyahu had presented the war as a means of eliminating Iran’s nuclear weapons programme and possibly of regime change in Teheran. For now the clerics remain in power, although perhaps less sure of their position than before. But Trump did not sign up to changing the Iranian political order. On the nuclear programme he claimed success - ‘obliteration’ - almost as soon as the bombers returned to base. Soon, to Trump’s irritation, intelligence leaks suggested that sufficient elements had survived to make it possible for Iran to reconstitute its programme. These were denounced as no more than preliminary findings by the White House, leaked malevolently, but they could not have been any more preliminary than Trump’s own instant assessment.

More considered assessments are now available which inevitably produce a more nuanced picture. But they do leave the situation in key respects similar to the one that existed before the bombing. Serious damage has been done from which it will take Iran a long time to recover. But to be certain that Iran will not at some point become a nuclear power there may either have to be a return to military action or negotiations.