So there we have it. This is how it always is in war. Things which are confidently asserted at the time turn out to be false. Insistences which seemed reliable in the moment turn out to be meaningless. As the smoke clears, the certainty drifts away with it.
Following the US strikes on Iran, Donald Trump repeatedly said that the country’s nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated”. Writing in his trademark style of all-caps, like some mad drunk uncle complaining about the local teenagers on Facebook, he insisted on social media that “the nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed”.
Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who has arguably a few dozen more brain cells than the President but certainly no more than that, reiterated this message. “Based on everything we have seen – and I’ve seen it all – our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” he told CNN. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.”
Those insistences barely survived a 24-hour news cycle. An assessment of the damage by the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, was leaked to CNN and The New York Times overnight, painting a very different story. In fact, it suggested, the core components of Iran’s nuclear programme had not been destroyed. The stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. The centrifuges are mostly intact. The country has only been set back by a few months.
It’s too early for any kind of comprehensive analysis, but that is an increasingly consensus view outside the White House. The Republican chairman emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, told CNN: “I’ve been briefed on this plan in the past, and it was never meant to completely destroy the nuclear facilities… It was always known to be a temporary setback.” Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert, said neither Israel nor the US were able to destroy key underground nuclear facilities near Natanz, Isfahan or Parchin.
The Trump administration’s reaction was predictable, of course. They only have one way of speaking: childlike tantrums, conspiracy theory, abuse, paranoia and ignorance. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went through each in turn. “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump.”
This is like watching a sped-up, dumbed-down re-enactment of the war in Iraq in 2003. The initial invasion was fast and effective. Many of us who had opposed the war hesitated, as if perhaps we had made a mistake. Those who had supported it were hyper-confident. They had a swagger that suggested total vindication. President George Bush gave a victory speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner which read: “Mission Accomplished”.
It was not to be. In the months and years which followed, we discovered that the planning was inadequate, the understanding insufficient and the operation inept. Britain and America had created a cauldron of extremism and chaos that engulfed the region.
As irresponsible and negligent as it was, Iraq looks like an act of hyper-intelligent strategic genius compared to the infant outburst we’ve seen here. Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Iran for his own domestic political reasons. He humiliated Trump by not seeking US permission. America then undertook its own attack to give a sense of control and ownership over what was happening regardless. None of this had the slightest planning or foresight, just a series of knee-jerk instincts by two of the most venal men in global politics.
And now where are we? Iran has been abused and humiliated. It has been embarrassed on the global stage, even as it reels from the loss of its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Syria.
These things matter. They are of profound importance when it comes to nuclear issues in particular because nuclear capacity is, more often than not, a way of signifying national pride. Muslim countries often treat Pakistani visitors with particular respect because they believe the country’s nuclear arsenal means it can’t be bossed around by the West.
Now Iran is angry and demeaned. And according to last night’s report, it is just months away from getting back to its previous state of nuclear potential.
Trump and Netanyahu’s actions have served to undermine the precise rules-based order which helps control countries like Iran. Back during Iraq, Tony Blair put everything on the line to get the US to go down the UN route. Today, people would scoff at the very idea. We live in a dog-eat-dog world again, where the rules for conflict are disintegrating before our eyes.
This has not been a success. It is a disaster. We live in a far more dangerous world than we did a couple of weeks ago. The actions which are taken now, with barely a second’s thought and certainly no sober planning for tomorrow, will echo into the future, with potentially disastrous implications.
Trump’s nonsense statements do nothing to alter that, no matter how vigorously he hits the caps lock.