One of the most profound threats to global security for the last thirty years or more has suffered a historic setback that will resonate for decades.
In a ruse worthy of World War II’s “Operation Fortitude,” which enabled the D-Day landings, President Donald Trump launched heavy ordnance airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons program late Saturday — 48 hours after telling the clerical regime he was going to mull his response over the next two weeks.
Overnight, the US Air Force has perhaps irreversibly degraded Iran’s drive for the bomb.
It’s tempting to react to the US strikes with unbridled euphoria — but that’s still premature.
The next few hours and days will produce a sober battle damage assessment by both the United States and Israel, detailing the degree of destruction sustained at these facilities.
That in turn will determine whether the badly bruised Iranian regime can embark on a reconstruction effort.
According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, “Operation Midnight Hammer” unleashed 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — “bunker-buster” bombs carrying 30,000-pound payloads — on the three nuclear sites, marking the first time that these had been deployed in an operational setting.
Speaking to reporters Sunday morning, Hegseth said all three facilities had sustained “extremely severe damage and destruction.”
But neither the Americans nor the Israelis have yet confirmed that the Iranian nuclear program has been neutralized entirely.
The extent of the destruction of the underground advanced centrifuge site at Fordow is still unclear.
Predictably, in the immediate aftermath of the strike, the Iranians vehemently denied that comprehensive damage had been sustained.
An Islamic regime official in Qom, where the facility is located, insisted that “contrary to the claims of the lying US president, the Fordow nuclear facility has not been seriously damaged, and most of what was damaged was only on the ground, which can be restored.”
Another particular concern is the fate of more than 400 kilograms of nuclear weapons-grade uranium concealed by the regime at Isfahan.
The whereabouts of this stockpile is presently unknown.
Last week Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, revealed that the Iranians had told him the stockpile could be removed and placed under “special protective measures” in the event of an attack.
“We haven’t been informed of anything in detail,” Grossi said. “We don’t know what these protective additional measures are.”
In addition, an even more deeply buried enrichment site than Fordow, known as Pickaxe Mountain, is now under construction at Natanz.
It’s not clear how much damage that facility — said to be immune from the MOPs dropped on Fordow — sustained in Saturday’s strikes. If it survived, Pickaxe Mountain could allow Iran to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
Outside of the nuclear program, significant risks remain on the ground.
The United States has 40,000 troops in the Middle East, now readying to both pre-empt and respond to Iranian missile attacks on their bases as well as on US allies.
Iran’s Houthi rebel proxy in Yemen may resume its campaign of strikes against the US naval presence and commercial shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, once again shutting down access to the Suez Canal.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah appears to be refraining from joining the fight but remains a threat.
Should Iran’s tottering regime reach a point of collapse, it could well decide to opt for martyrdom in a blaze of glory — with strikes against Israel, Sunni Arab nations whom it regards as “Zionist collaborators,” as well as American, Jewish and Israeli targets in Europe, North America and beyond.
Yet the US strikes could herald the transformation of a region that has been synonymous with foreign-policy and national-security failure since the occupation of Iraq more than 22 years ago.
In 2003, FDD’s Mark Dubowitz believed that the Islamist regime in Tehran, rather than the Iraqi Baathist one, was the true existential threat in the Middle East.
That contention has only become stronger in the intervening years.
What’s critical now is for the US to remain engaged — using its political clout and unmatched military capabilities to defend its interests in the Middle East, in partnership with a strong Israeli ally and perhaps, one day, with a free Iran.
Mark Dubowitz is chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Ben Cohen is a senior analyst and director of FDD’s rapid response outreach.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
