(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Trump's bluster has been debunked [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-25
Trump’s reckless bluster about his “spectacular military success” in Iran has just been thoroughly debunked. A classified defense report has surfaced, indicating that the US targeted bombing campaign barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear program. While the attack set Iran’s nuclear enrichment program back by “only a few months,” the global fallout will last years.
As Trump was braying to the world about his singular spectacularity, claiming US bunker buster bombshad “totally obliterated” Iran’s enrichment sites, no one—including Trump—knew the extent of the damage, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
To the exact point, no one knew then, or knows now, where Iran hid its enriched uranium, but US bombs apparently didn’t hit the stash. Had the uranium been struck, a significant increase in radioactivity would have been detected at the bombsites, which the IAEA confirmed did not happen well before team Trump claimed otherwise.
Speculation about what comes next, including whether the paper-thin ceasefire will hold, is just that. While we wait, several things are true at once:
What intelligence did Trump rely on?
At least when Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq, they did so after spending a year presenting data and rationaleto the American public, leading Congress to authorize the attack. Trump rejected US intelligence, disregarded Congress’ constitutional role, and ordered massive attacks based on Netanyahu’s word and his own ill-informed ego, alone.
Despite a tenuous two-day old ceasefire, international fears of a dangerously escalating conflictthroughout the Middle East persist. Just yesterday, JD Vance acknowledged that Iran’s 900 lb. stockpile of enriched uranium remains intact. Intelligence cited trucks moving materials assumed to be enriched uranium out of two bombed sites, Fordo and Natanz, right before the US attacks. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the material could be used to build about 10 nuclear weapons.
Minimizing the importance of the uranium’s location, Vance said the crucial question is whether Iran can still “enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level and can they convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon?” It sure seems like knowing where the uranium is located, including whether it has been moved to an as-yet undetected enrichment facility, would be the first step in assessing the risk of its conversion to weapons-grade. But when Trump killed Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, we lost strict monitoring and verification safeguards including the ability to inspect facilities. Unknown facilities could be anywhere, thanks to Trump, and it’s impossible to know what we don’t know.
Experts also seem to agree, despite Trump and Fox News’ non-stop bluster, that Fordo’s deeply buried equipment may also have survived.
Geopolitical blowback is not yet known
After unilaterally killing the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump has now unilaterally bombed a sovereign nation that had not attacked the US, while still claiming to the world that he was “negotiating” with them. Any countries considering “a deal” with Trump saw exactly what happened, just as NATO watched in horror as Trump embraced the aggressor in Ukraine. Fallout from our allies’ inability to trust the US will take years to assess, and will fall equally on successor administrations.
Even though Iran has accepted a cease fire, query what that ceasefire is worth to the US given that Iran will now likely develop weapons-grade uranium with a vengeance. We don’t know when it will happen or what form it will take, but the most dangerous fallout of all is that, following US attacks, Iran now sees the development of nuclear weapons as existential. Iran’s clerical rulers have long chanted “Death to America,” and Iran’s foreign minister now warns of “everlasting consequences.”
If Iran now rushes to build nuclear weapons with its enriched uranium, which US intelligence confirmed had not already happened before the bombing, Trump’s blunder could become existential for both the US and Israel. That’s why diplomacy was crucial. But Trump couldn’t resist being the big bully on the playground, and he still can’t. What purpose does it serve, what diplomacy does it advance, for Trump to contradict his own administration, and even his “America first” base, squawking about regime change on social media?
Just as sending the US military into LA risks escalating the violence there, Trump’s regime-change rhetoric, coming on the heels of his dubious bombing campaign, virtually guarantees that Iran will hit back. It may take months, it may be direct or through its terrorist proxies, but Iran will eventually retaliate and escalate, which is why no US president before Trump ordered the strike he did.
On Sunday, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session, where Secretary-General António Guterres described the US bombing as a “perilous turn” in global affairs. Although allies and foes alike urge an immediate return to diplomacy, the prerequisites for any successful outcome—trust and credibility—have dissipated, possibly for good. If Trump has “totally annihilated” anything, it’s the antecedent trust, goodwill, and appearance of fair dealing required for diplomacy to succeed.
This is not a wish for diplomacy or the ceasefire to fail, but a realistic assessment of the likelihood of its long-term success.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense.. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/25/2329970/-Trump-s-bluster-has-been-debunked?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
