Trump: Even More Wrong!
So much for the quick and painless airstrike.
Earlier this week the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World acknowledged its failed prediction that Donald Trump would not bomb Iran. Trump unquestionably bombed Iran. Indeed, there was a whole weekend’s worth of stories about the White House’s attempts at misdirection about bombing Iran and how Trump came around to the idea of bombing Iran.
When the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World makes a predictive mistake, the ramifications are minor. Maybe I lose some subscribers; maybe my reputation as an international relations observer takes a modest hit. My point is, these are table stakes. It’s not like I claimed that the airstrikes were a complete success and got contradicted on that point within 72 hours or something. That would be super-embarrassing.
And that brings us to the growing contradictions between Donald Trump’s claims about the bombing and the reality of the situation.
On Saturday, Trump asserted that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.” This week, after-action intelligence assessments are trickling out, and they tell a somewhat different story.
On Monday, the Atlantic’s reporting team threw some cold water on Trump’s claims of an unambiguous success: “The information that’s emerged so far suggests to experts that Iran’s nuclear capacities have been set back significantly but that the two-decade atomic standoff with Iran is by no means over…. One senior Israeli official—whose country has perhaps the most granular knowledge of Iran’s program and the personnel involved in it—told us that the impact remains unclear but that Iran’s nuclear facilities have not been entirely destroyed.”
On Tuesday, two separate news reports suggested the limits of the U.S. bombing’s effects. First, CNN’s national security team reported that the initial intelligence assessment of the bombing was somewhat at odds with Trump’s claims:
The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.
The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.
The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.
“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.
So that seems like bad news for folks who wanted the conflict to subside.
Even worse is the New York Times headline for this story: “Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says.”1 Here’s the NYT’s gist:
The initial damage assessment suggests that President Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “obliterated” was overstated. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday, and House members on Friday….
The Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly….
The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said its findings were “flat-out wrong.”
“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Leavitt’s “everyone knows” statement is the tell that the White House does not have a great response to this news. Between the White House’s attempt to say, “common sense says the bombs worked” and DIA saying, “we’re unconvinced that the bombs worked,” my inclination is to trust the experts more. Leavitt’s statement is designed to have Trump’s base ignore any bad intelligence news.
Now Iran’s willingness to de-escalate and accept a proposed ceasefire must be interpreted in a different light. This is no longer about a defeated state deciding to lick its wounds rather than risk a wider conflagration. Instead, it looks like a state that did not suffer a knockout blow and wants to ensure its nuclear program continues.
If the preliminary intelligence is correct — and let’s acknowledge that this remains an important “if” — the short-term and long-term implications are bad. In the short run, this news will tarnish Trump’s attempt at a victory lap at the NATO summit. That, however, is small potatoes. The real problem is the long-term effects on Iran’s nuclear program. As the Atlantic team reported:
Iranian leaders… have given no indication that they are ready to surrender the nuclear program. Facing the likelihood of ongoing U.S. and Israeli attacks, they may be more likely to make the long-feared decision to try to race toward a bomb….
Although Israel has demonstrated a remarkable penetration of Iran’s scientific and military establishment over the past year, even it may not know the location and condition of Iran’s enriched-uranium supply or the condition of its centrifuges and weapons-making components. No one knows, either, whether Iran, as it suggested earlier this month, can fall back on a third enrichment site it purports to have created, in addition to the damaged facilities at Fordo and Natanz….
After 10 days of Israeli strikes on Iran’s air- and missile-defense sites and other security installations, the country’s conventional military capability has been seriously weakened. But as Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard Kennedy School, noted to us, the long-term impact on the nuclear program is likely smaller. Meanwhile, any hope of a negotiated solution in which Iran agrees to give up enrichment is likely diminished.
Iran has long been divided between hard-liners who place high value on attaining a bomb and others who favor negotiations, sanctions relief, and global reintegration. Now the political power of the latter faction “has been destroyed by these strikes,” Bunn said. “There’s quite a number of people who are saying, Damn, we really need that nuclear weapon now.”
Trump clearly wanted this attack to be one and done. But if Iran’s nuclear capabilities remain somewhat intact, he will have to decide if he wants to launch follow-up strikes. He would be doing so at a time when the American public disapproves of bombing Iran and the U.S, Congress distrusts Trump on bombing Iran.
In short: sure, I got my Trump prediction wrong, but I wasn’t the one playing with live ammunition. The initial assessments suggest that in not obliterating the targets, the Trump administration has just made future U.S. national security a more perilous road ahead.
The Washington Post has a similar report based on the DIA findings.
My understanding is that bomb damage assessment is hard to do and takes time. It also seems that first reports tend to overstate the damage. But it was utterly in keeping with Trump and his cheer squad (membership of which is a requirement to be in cabinet) would claim complete and absolute success before the planes had even landed. The media should have pointed out that they were being premature before the concerning assessment was leaked.
I rather suspect the conflict between Iran and the US may go on for a lot longer than Donald Trump's usual attention span.
I think we'll be very fortunate if we get through the next three and a half years without Trump ordering the use of a nuclear weapon, with the most likely target being Iran. He's growing progressively disordered and prone to grandiosity.