Snap Insight: US strikes against Iran raise more questions than answers

SINGAPORE: After days of mixed signals, the United States joined in the Israel-Iran war, sending air strikes – including the use of bunker-busting bombs – on Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday (Jun 22). As the world waits for what comes next, the strikes will likely first kick off a war of narratives.
In his televised address, US President Donald Trump celebrated the strikes as ' a spectacular military success ', even if it is unclear what that means and despite US intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) assessments that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
Saying his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was 'wrong', Mr Trump echoed Israeli claims that Iran was months, if not weeks, away from possessing nuclear weapons.
On Saturday, before the strikes, Ms Gabbard tried to reword her position saying that Iran 'can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise assembly' in a post on X, and that her testimony to the US Congress – that the intelligence community 'continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' – had been taken out of context.
Mr Trump's dismissal of the US intelligence assessment raises questions about who the president listens to: the US intelligence community or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
HOW SAFE IS IRAN'S ENRICHED URANIUM?
While Mr Trump said the three sites – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan – targeted by the United States have been ' completely and totally obliterated ', Iranian officials asserted that Iran had already pre-emptively transferred its 60 per cent enriched uranium. (To be of weapons grade, uranium must be enriched to at least 90 per cent).
"All enriched materials…are in secure locations. We will come out of this war with our hands full,' said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Mohsen Rezaei.
This would make a difference in how far the Iranian nuclear programme is set back, as the US claims. Nuclear facilities can be rebuilt. So the question is how secure those locations where the uranium has supposedly been moved to are.
If the death on Friday of an unidentified Iranian nuclear scientist, an alleged weaponisation specialist, is anything to go by, Iran's uranium may be less secure than the country would like the world to believe.
Israel said it killed the scientist in a safe house where he was hiding to escape assassination. He was the 10th nuclear expert assassinated by Israel in the last week.
Military analysts note that, depending on how deep underground Iran's nuclear facilities are, the US may need several bombings to destroy them at the risk of being sucked into an expanding regional conflagration.
Mr Trump suggested, in his address after the strikes, that the United States will launch further attacks against Iran if it refuses to return to nuclear negotiations on his terms, which Iran has repeatedly rejected.
IRAN'S CAREFUL RESPONSE
Iran is likely to calibrate its response carefully, even as it braces for Israeli follow-up strikes and potentially further US military action.
While it is difficult to see Iran forgoing its perceived right to retaliate, it is likely to want to ensure that it does so in a manner that keeps the door open to negotiations.
A restrained Iranian response would also cater to advice proffered by its partners, China and Russia, who do not want to see an all-out regional war and are likely to primarily offer Iran political and diplomatic support rather than military participation.
Russia and China are sure also to have advised Iran to make good on threats to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major global trade artery through which much of the world's oil and gas supplies flow because this would increase the risk of further intervention in the war by the United States and other Western powers.
WILL GROWING CONFLICT REMAIN CONTAINED IN MIDDLE EAST?
Middle Eastern states are concerned about the fallout from the US strikes.
Gulf states await potential Iranian retaliation against US military and diplomatic facilities on their soil. In addition, they will also be worrying about the potential environmental fallout of the US bunker-busting bombs taking out Iranian nuclear facilities.
Türkiye and Iraq dread an expected influx of Iranian refugees if hostilities continue or, even worse, expand. Together with Pakistan, Iraq and Azerbaijan, Türkiye worries about the potential spillover effect of potential unrest among ethnic Iranian minorities like the Kurds, Azeris, Arabs and Baloch that straddle their borders.
For their part, Egyptians fear that war is inevitable amid concern that Israel could attempt to drive Gaza's Palestinian population out of the Strip and into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Will an expanding conflict remain contained to the Middle East? That will likely depend on whether Iran strikes at US, Israeli or Jewish targets elsewhere in the world.
Dr James M Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M Dorsey.

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