At the June Group of Seven meeting in Canada, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, answered a reporter’s question about Israel’s attacks on Iran that were then taking place: “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.” He added to the German journalist, “We are also affected by this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.” The chancellor’s candor was notable, and he wasn’t finished. A few days later, back in Germany, after the United States had joined Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, Merz said: “There is no reason for us and also for me personally to criticize what Israel started a week ago and also no reason to criticize what America did last weekend. It is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn’t an option either.” Such insights are important coming from any European leader, but especially from Germany’s. Rather than condemning military action, Merz acknowledged the reality that, in effect, Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and one of its most dangerous nuclear proliferators. He said out loud what many of his fellow European leaders knew but couldn’t bring themselves to admit, and in doing so, reversed two decades of European Union policy in support of failed diplomacy with Iran. Merz now recognized that the logic of force, whether in self-defense in Israel’s case or preemptively in America’s, had become overwhelming. The rationale for military action had become only more compelling when Tehran unleashed its “ring of fire” assaults against Israel after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. If the Trump administration had any strategic sense, it would immediately seize the opportunity Merz has provided. Regardless of whether European leaders might ever have initiated the strikes against Iran, they have now occurred—and they define a new reality about Iran’s nuclear-proliferation threat. President Donald Trump has been offered a great chance to lead a united Western alliance that can reconsolidate tactics against Iran’s nuclear efforts. The EU’s efforts to cajole the mullahs into giving up their nuclear ambitions date back to 2003. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom (the EU-3, as they called themselves then) wanted to prove that they could thwart Iran’s quest for weapons of mass destruction through diplomacy, in pointed contrast to George W. Bush’s military action against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. The EU aspired to a higher purpose, as two commentators noted in Foreign Affairs in 2007: “The European doctrine of managed globalization envisions a world of multilateral rules that will supersede U.S. power.” Over a dozen years and through many permutations, these negotiations with Tehran led to the deeply flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The EU-3 efforts did have one virtue. From the start, they pressured Iran to forswear uranium-enrichment activity before being permitted access to Western nuclear-reactor technology. The Europeans also insisted that Iran refrain from reprocessing spent reactor fuel to extract plutonium, the alternative source of fissile material for a bomb. These crucial prohibitions, the EU-3 believed, would block Iranian nuclear-weapons ambitions while affording Tehran the benefit of civil uses of atomic energy for electrical power, medical research, and the like. When President Bush agreed in 2006 to join the European diplomatic initiative, he did so on the express precondition that Iran suspend its enrichment activities. He wanted to oblige the mullahs to renounce both ends of the nuclear-fuel cycle in exchange for receiving civil nuclear technology. Initially, the Obama administration continued with the no-enrichment, no-reprocessing position that Bush had established—until desperation to get a deal ultimately meant caving on this central element of the EU-3’s long-standing strategy. That concession to Tehran was the 2015 deal’s original sin. President Trump was right to withdraw from the Obama administration’s misbegotten project in 2018—even though the EU signatories remain pledged to the zombie agreement to this day. Iran, of course, never had the slightest interest in renouncing domestic mastery of the entire nuclear-fuel cycle. As a practical matter, this was perfectly logical for a regime that saw getting the bomb as central to its survival: How else could the Iranians produce nuclear weapons free from external reliance and therefore vulnerability? These self-evident truths demonstrated so palpably Iran’s intention to become a nuclear-weapons state, rather than merely a green-energy success story, that I was always baffled by how anyone could mistake Tehran’s true objective. After last month’s Israeli and American military strikes, including Israel’s targeting of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists, that historical issue is now moot. Iran has neither shown remorse nor indicated any inclination to give up its long quest to acquire nuclear weapons. Tehran’s immediate response to the attacks was to declare Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “enemies of God,” which, coming from a theocracy, sounds serious. The regime immediately began work to excavate the deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordo that had been struck by U.S. bunker-buster bombs. After personally threatening the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, Tehran suspended all cooperation with the agency. These are not the actions of a government seeking serious diplomacy. By contrast, amid all its problems, Israel is helping Ukraine repair damage to water systems caused by Russian attacks. The 2015 deal has become a dead letter, but its nominal expiration date of October 18 coincides with the Trump administration’s new opportunity to pull in its EU partners to create a solid Western position that would put more international pressure on Iran’s highly stressed leadership. Even more important, a resolute West would encourage internal Iranian dissidents to express their opposition to the regime more forcefully, encouraging fragmentation within its senior ranks. A renewed Western alliance has no guarantee of success against Iran. Its restoration would not ensure solidarity on other fronts, such as Ukraine, where the Trump administration may be pulling away from the international support for Kyiv. Nor would it ensure the future of NATO, whose superficially friendly summit in The Hague last month merely carried its members past one more potential flash point. But revived Western cooperation on Iran might at least give those inside the Trump administration who still prize America’s alliances hope that all is not yet lost.     This article was orginally published in The Atlantic on July 9, 2025. To read the original article, click here.

Bibi Netanyahu’s Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump on Monday could be a game-changer. They will undoubtedly focus on Iran, Gaza, and Syria’s new regime among other subjects. But how close are the two leaders’ positions, and can their differences be reconciled? Both will declare the meeting “successful,” but the reality may be quite different. On Iran, Trump crossed a Rubicon by ordering direct US military action against nuclear-weapons-related targets in Iran. He may think the strikes were simply a “one and done” affair, but, if so, he is badly mistaken. Trump put his personal prestige on the line, not to mention America’s. Despite his contention that the B-2 bunker-buster raids “completely and totally obliterated” the targeted nuclear-program sites, much remains to be done.

No one knows that better than Netanyahu, who has focused on the Iranian nuclear threat for over three decades. Although he persuaded (or manoeuvred) Trump into using military force, Trump swerved immediately after receiving favourable reports on the strikes to impose a cease-fire on Israel and Iran. Netanyahu had little choice but to stand down, having achieved two major objectives: getting Trump into the fight and imposing significant, albeit not fatal, damage on Iran’s nuclear project. Iran also had little choice, having been pounded by Israel and the US, but to launch merely pro forma retaliation, shake its rhetorical fist in defiance, and hope to escape any additional destruction. Nonetheless, Netanyahu sees that the time is ripe for further action against Iran, including actions to encourage the domestic opposition to move against the ayatollahs. Iran’s air defences are now essentially flat, but the moment will not last forever. Top Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists have been eliminated, but their ranks will reform, and their respective work will resume. The ayatollahs have clearly signalled their continuing resolve by effectively expelling all International Atomic Energy Agency personnel from the country.

The last thing Netanyahu wants is for Trump to throw Tehran an economic or political lifeline. Israel seeks regime change in Iran, and Netanyahu needs at least Trump’s acquiescence for Israel to continue deconstructing the remains of Iran’s nuclear enterprise. Further US participation would be icing on the cake. By contrast, Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize. After all, he reasons, Barack Obama received one (which he didn’t deserve), so why not Trump? Trump’s Nobel obsession now seems concentrated on Gaza, where the ongoing conflict has intensified since the Israel-Iran ceasefire took effect. He has pressured both Israel and Hamas to reach agreement to effect the return some still-unsettled number of Israeli hostages and remains, in exchange releasing possibly 1,000 Hamas prisoners in Israeli custody, plus a 60-day ceasefire. The sticking point remains Hamas’s insistence on a complete end to the war, or, reportedly, a commitment that talks to end the war commence immediately after the hostage/prisoner exchanges. This sort of framework has been used before, but its durability remains just as doubtful as other post-October 7, 2023 efforts. Trump wants to announce a cease-fire on or before the Monday meeting, but how long it lasts is anyone’s guess. Hamas undoubtedly wants relief from Israeli military strikes, and domestic political pressure to secure the release of more hostages has left Netanyahu little manoeuvring room. But, apart from humanitarian objectives regarding the hostages, Israel gains no strategic upside from yet another cease fire. Israel has repeatedly suspended combat operations and withdrawn from already-secured positions in Gaza, and then been forced to re-take them, at considerable human and material costs to the Israeli Defense Forces. Lengthening the war also imposes additional strains on an already stressed Israeli economy. The collapse of Syria’s Assad regime, replaced by former Al-Nusra Front terrorists (now known as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or “HTS”), was undoubtedly a serious setback for Iran. Acceding to Saudi Arabia’s requests, Trump lifted US economic sanctions previously imposed against Assad’s government, but substantial questions remain whether HTS has actually renounced terrorism. Its leader, Syria’s de facto head of government, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is also an unknown, having shed his combat fatigues for a suit, trimmed his beard, and dropped his nom de guerre for, apparently, his real name. In the meantime, Israel continues military operations inside Syria, in addition to holding onto an extended buffer zone occupied after Assad’s fall. Perhaps nothing concrete regarding Syria will emerge from the Netanyahu-Trump meeting, but the two leaders need a better sense of each other’s concerns and objectives. Since the First World War, the Middle East has seen more diplomatic efforts crash and burn than any other geographic hot spot. Iran and Gaza today are unlikely to prove more successful. Monday’s most important outcome in the West Wing will be decisions on the possible further use of US and Israeli military force to achieve key objectives on both fronts.

This article was originally published in The Telegraph on July 5, 2025. To read the original article, please click here.

Satisfaction and frustration most accurately capture what should be America’s reaction to last month’s Israeli-U.S. military strikes on Iran.

Satisfaction because the raids, particularly against the nuclear-weapons program, may have achieved what decades of illusion, naïveté, misguided diplomacy and inadequate economic sanctions failed to achieve, and frustration because the strikes were terminated early and unnecessarily.

It remains to be seen if Washington has learned enough of a lesson to complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, by military means if necessary. As on many previous occasions, Iran has announced that it will cease cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, demonstrating that there is currently no serious chance of a satisfactory diplomatic solution.

The early signs are mixed and opaque. Much depends on the stability of the ayatollahs’ regime and its internal divisions, and whether Iran’s population will publicly express its discontent.

Unfortunately, the opposition in Iran, while national in scope, is not well organized, and the regime’s potential for brutal repression has been repeatedly demonstrated. Much also depends on whether America’s leaders have the necessary resolve, focus and persistence — a matter in considerable doubt.

The Middle East has changed significantly since Iranian proxies enacted on Oct. 7, 2023, the culmination of the Islamic republic’s “Ring of Fire” strategy — surrounding Israel with enemies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and foreign militias in Syria. Along almost every important strategic dimension, Iran is today far weaker, and Israel (and the United States) far stronger.

Nuclear-weapons factors of production delayed are nuclear weapons denied, albeit temporarily. There is zero evidence the ayatollahs are prepared to abandon their nuclear dreams, and this is certainly not the moment for Washington to throw Tehran political or economic lifelines, particularly not a “new” nuclear deal with the United States.

Immediately after President Trump prematurely declared victory, ended U.S. strikes and forced Israel and Iran into a cease-fire, fierce debate erupted over initial estimates of the damage inflicted on Tehran’s nuclear project. With precious little evidence, Mr. Trump immediately proclaimed the “complete and total obliteration” of Iran’s efforts, while anonymous sources breathlessly  maintained that a hot-off-the-presses preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency analysis concluded America had set Iran’s nuclear program back only a few months. The day after the attack, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dan Caine, said accurately that it was “way too early” to make a viable assessment.

To borrow from Matthew Arnold, ignorant armies clashed by night in this battle for control of the political narrative. Only further data can clarify or perhaps resolve where the truth lies. I am satisfied for now with the subsequent conclusion of Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the Israeli-U.S. attacks caused “enormous damage” to Iran’s nuclear efforts. Enormous yes, but still not enough.

The inevitable continuing debate over whether further military force will be necessary will  color both Washington’s view on Tehran’s remaining nuclear threat and how to deal with its badly weakened regime. Those who opposed using military force, including several Democratic senators who now criticize Israel and the United States for failing to destroy every aspect of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, implicitly argue that we shouldn’t have destroyed any of it. Where is the enriched uranium, they ask? What about newer or more obscure sites of nuclear activity, like Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz? What about the reality that pummeling the physical program does not eliminate the knowledge Iran retains to rebuild it?

In a perfect world, all of Iran’s uranium, at whatever enrichment level, would be removed and stored at a safe place, like Oak Ridge, Tenn., where what was once Libya’s nuclear-weapons program was shipped. Any uranium in the hands of a proliferator is potentially dangerous.

Whatever stockpile the ayatollahs may have previously hidden or recently spirited away from known nuclear facilities is truly dangerous only when weaponized. It must be converted into uranium metal to fashion nuclear weapons. As best we know, Tehran’s conversion capabilities, both from yellowcake to UF6 and from UF6 to metal, are most likely now inoperable.

Moreover, Iran’s weapons-fabrication facilities are either known and destroyed; underground and possibly irradiated; or at least capable of being observed and therefore destroyed later. Critical here is continuous American and Israeli surveillance, and the resolve to strike again if necessary.

The existence of unknown locations cannot be discounted. But the possibility that everything was not destroyed in the first attacks is not a legitimate reason to have forsworn those attacks.

Some people are never satisfied. If the United States had instead bombed uranium-storage facilities, those opposed to the strikes would complain about releasing radioactive materials into the atmosphere. Patience and persistence are required to stifle such a dogged proliferator like Iran.

Ironically, the continued existence of the scientific and technological know-how for Iran to rebuild its nuclear capacity was precisely what concerned George W. Bush’s administration as it faced Saddam Hussein. After the Persian Gulf war of 1991, Mr. Hussein kept on his payroll some 3,000 “nuclear mujahedeen,” as he called them, to recreate Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program. They were well known to U.N. weapons inspectors after the 1991 war. After the second war in the gulf, the United States and other coalition nations had programs to keep them gainfully employed so that they could not be hired by other rogue states.

That intellectual firepower alone was a compelling argument for regime change in Iraq. Iran now has the same asset, although degraded by Israel’s most recent attacks.

Nonetheless, many are still reflexively pursuing the Holy Grail of an Iran nuclear deal, perhaps including, according to news reports, the Trump administration. Whatever efforts are made, however, will simply be a waste of oxygen.

Satisfying America’s legitimate demands requires Iran to do a full Libya, meaning real performance in denuclearizing, not just acquiescing to treaty verbiage. It requires that Iran surrender all of its weapons-related assets, meaning any enriched uranium and all remaining physical assets, including dual-use capabilities.

However, absent a change of government in Tehran, which Washington should support, a full Libya is impossible. Unlike Muammar el-Qaddafi, the mullahs, already badly humiliated, realize that further humiliation would fatally weaken their rule. They will never voluntarily accept that fate. Instead, they will resume their earlier tactic of using negotiations to string the West along until memories dim and, as the old saying goes, “zeal for a deal” takes over, as it did for Barack Obama, producing the fatally flawed 2015 Iran agreement.

Closely related to the suggestion of more diplomacy is the assumption that the International Atomic Energy Agency is the solution. Realistically, the ayatollahs are no more likely to acquiesce to the agency’s prerequisites for a proper inventory and cleanup job than they would to American or Israeli prerequisites.

The atomic energy agency does important work, but it is neither an espionage agency nor an occupying force. Much of the most important and sensitive information it has acquired over the years came from the United States, Britain and Israel. Tehran has long treated the agency with disdain, following what James Baker once called the “cheat and then retreat” strategy to defy effective international inspection. Most important, the issues Iran poses are political, not technical. The atomic agency can be useful in a future solution, but not as the centerpiece.

The all-purpose answer from those who prefer wringing their hands to accomplishing anything: Remember Iraq. The critics of the U.S. strike on Iran are fighting the last war. The worldwide terrorist proxies Iran deployed and its advanced nuclear programs are orders of magnitude more threatening than Mr. Hussein’s Iraq. Moreover, “no boots on the ground” need be involved. The short answer is that Iran is not Iraq, which Jerusalem and Washington have already partly demonstrated.

Israel most likely has the resolve to do what is necessary to ensure its survival. The real question for America’s survival is whether the same can be said for the current U.S. administration.

 

This article was first published in The New York Times on July 3, 2025. Click here to read the original article.