Iran's nuclear facilities have been smashed, but the race toward a bomb may be gathering pace
CNN —
US President Donald Trump quickly heralded the US strikes on Iran as a 'spectacular military success,' saying the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities were 'totally obliterated.'
Western military sources tell CNN it's still too early to fully assess the damage wrought by more than a dozen US bunker buster bombs, plus an array of Tomahawk cruise missiles, slamming into Iran's main nuclear facilities.
But even if Trump's characterization turns out to be accurate, the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities may not mean the end of the Iranian nuclear threat.
Far from it.
For years, hard-line voices inside the Islamic Republic have been calling for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against exactly this kind of overwhelming attack.
Even as Iran continues to insist its nuclear program is for strictly peaceful purposes, those calls will now inevitably have been bolstered and the nuclear hard-liners may finally get their way.
Ominously, Iranian officials are already publicly hinting at pulling out of a key treaty – the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT – designed to monitor and prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons.
'The NPT is not able to protect us, so why a country like Iran, or other countries interested to have a peaceful nuclear energy, should rely on NPT,' Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a conference in Istanbul.
Other Iranian lawmakers have called for the Islamic Republic to formally withdraw from the treaty, in what would likely be interpreted as a virtual confirmation of Iranian intent to build a nuclear weapon.
Of course, intent is different than capacity.
And nuclear capacity is likely to be a big issue in the immediate aftermath of the US strikes. As the latest satellite images appear to confirm, being struck with more than a dozen bunker buster bombs will have seriously impeded, if not destroyed, Iran's nuclear program.
But if there is political will, nuclear enrichment facilities can eventually be repaired or rebuilt, while Iran's technical know-how survives, despite the targeting by Israel of multiple Iranian nuclear scientists.
Meanwhile, officials at the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, say they are uncertain of the whereabouts of the nuclear material Iran has already manufactured, including the large amounts of uranium-235 enriched to 60%, which is very close to weapons-grade levels.
Iranian state media says the three nuclear sites struck by the United States – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – were 'evacuated' beforehand, raising the possibility that some or all of that material is being stored elsewhere, possibly in a secret facility, unknown to nuclear inspectors.
This satellite image shows the Fordow enrichment facility in Iran on Sunday after the US strikes. Editors' note: The satellite photo above was rotated by Maxar Technologies, the source of the image, to show the original orientation of the moment the image was taken.
Maxar Technologies
None of this dangerous nuclear uncertainty is what Trump seems to have bargained for.
'Iran, the bully of the Middle East,' he announced after the US strikes, 'must now make peace.'
But with the entire region now braced for more Iranian retaliatory strikes – on Israel, US military bases or key shipping lanes, such as the Strait of Hormuz – peacemaking seems vanishingly distant.
'Our talks with Iran were a real window of opportunity,' one European diplomat insisted to CNN, referring to the brief meetings held between European and Iranian officials in Geneva on Friday.
'But the Americans have now slammed that window shut,' the diplomat added.
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