Within a day of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, a debate began about how much damage has been done to Tehran’s nuclear program.
The ceasefire began on Tuesday, a day after Iran carried out a retaliatory missile attack in response to the US bombing early on Sunday. The war lasted 12 days.
Israel carried out the initial surprise attack and then spent 10 days going after various targets in Iran. Among the targets of the US and Israeli airstrikes were Iran’s nuclear program.
The US bombed the important underground Fordow complex, as well as striking Natanz and Isfahan. The IDF also struck Natanz and Isfahan, as well as Arak.
Other attacks were carried out on other sites. It will take time to assess how much damage was done to Tehran’s nuclear program. Many questions remain, such as what has happened to Iran’s hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium. Other questions relate to its underground facilities and enrichment capabilities.
While the assessments of the damage are important, the wider debate is also important. This is because policy is not only driven by the technical facts but also perceptions.
The US is supposed to be holding a new round of talks with Iran. This follows six rounds that occurred before the Israeli airstrikes on June 13. Those talks were supposed to produce a new Iran deal that would cut down on enrichment or reduce it to zero.
While US President Donald Trump often writes on social media about major demands regarding Iran, it’s not always clear if this is merely an opening position.
Talk of “unconditional surrender” is one example. Another example is the questions about whether Iran’s nuclear program would be dismantled. Clearly, Iran won’t want to dismantle the program.
Now that the nuclear program has been hit with airstrikes, it is in the interest of both Israel and the US to portray the strikes as successful.
Doubts over the effectiveness of US strikes have arisen
Trump was recently in Europe to attend a NATO event. As he went to Europe, US media sought to portray the strikes on Iran as perhaps not being as damaging as initially thought.
“Donald Trump and the US [defense] secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian [program] had been set back by only a few months,” The Guardian reported.
CBS reported: “During a news conference Wednesday to cap off the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, the president said there may be a formal agreement at some point with Iran, but he doesn’t believe one is necessary because their nuclear sites were ‘blown up to kingdom come.’”
The CIA has said the nuclear program was “severely damaged.”
The BBC reported: “CIA director John Ratcliffe says there was ‘credible intelligence ‘Iran’s nuclear [program] had been ‘severely damaged.’” The report deliberated whether the program was set back months or years.
Trump has asserted that the sites suffered “virtual obliteration,” and that the program has been set back decades.
The perception in Israel and the US, from the governments at least, is that the Iranian nuclear program has been badly damaged and set back years. In theory, this should fuel some kind of relief, because it means there isn’t a need for more rounds of strikes.
Could this lead to stability and a deal? The question then becomes whether Trump and the US feel they need a deal.
If the program is badly damaged, then Iran won’t be enriching uranium and moving toward a bomb any time soon. Therefore, the desire to have an optimistic narrative may make a deal less likely. That could set up a new crisis.
Iran may want to portray its program as weakened so that it can conduct covert progress in the future. Therefore, it may be in Tehran’s interest to make it seem like the program is now damaged or destroyed.
This means it could be in the interest of all sides to go with the same narrative. But the reasons for each side may be different. For Trump and the Israeli government, it is a point of pride and success. For Iran, it may be a way to hide what is happening in the shadows.
It’s worth recalling that Israel lulled itself into a false sense of security in Gaza over the years by exaggerating success against Hamas. For instance, in the May 2021 11-day conflict with Hamas, Israel convinced itself that the Hamas tunnel network had also been set back years.
In those days, the tunnel network was called the “Metro,” and a short bombing campaign was said to have destroyed a lot of it. During the October 7 massacre, it turned out that very little of the tunnel network had been damaged. In fact, 628 days of war later, the IDF is still demolishing tunnels in Gaza.
No one has gone back to 2021 and asked hard questions about why the Israeli public was misled and why the success was exaggerated.
The tendency to declare victory and bask in success can lead to negative consequences in the future. The battle over the narratives regarding the Iran conflict could lead to a similar scenario.