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Did the Attacks on Iran Succeed?

(Foreign Affairs) Richard Nephew - It is still too soon to say exactly how much the Israelis and Americans set back Iran's nuclear program. Even Iran probably does not understand the full scale of the damage to its enterprise. But experts can start to catalogue the tangible results. They know that the attacks dealt serious damage to Iran's enrichment facilities and killed many top scientists. They know that important equipment was blown apart and buried. But Iran may still have much of what it needs to make a weapon, either because it is safely in storage or because it can be salvaged from the rubble. The country may never produce a weapon. Or it could produce one very quickly. This much is clear: Iran's nuclear program was badly mauled. Iran's three main nuclear sites were all seriously damaged. Entire parts of Isfahan and Natanz were outright destroyed. Iran's Arak reactor was destroyed. The Israelis also attacked several other research and development sites throughout Iran, including the organization responsible for nuclear weapons-related research and development. The deaths of at least a dozen Iranian scientists in the Israeli strikes have cost Iran decades of practical knowledge useful to building nuclear weapons. The Israeli and U.S. attacks dealt a blow to Iran's nuclear ambitions, at least in the near term. But they are clearly not the end of the story. As a result, American policymakers must be prepared for a situation in which Iran makes a dash for a weapon. Iran will almost certainly reconstruct its program in more protected spaces. Israel has demonstrated that it has deeply penetrated the Iranian nuclear enterprise. But Iran's counterintelligence operatives will be on particularly high alert. The writer, a senior research scholar at Columbia University at the Center on Global Energy Policy, served as Deputy Special Envoy for Iran during the Biden administration.
2025-06-29 00:00:00
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