28 Jun Is Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threat over?
By,
Leonardo Morales, Senior Fellow MSI²
Many believe that the US bombing of underground nuclear facilities defused Iran’s nuclear and terrorist threat; others are more skeptical of this claim.
Israel’s military offensive against Iran and the Tehran-funded Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups has marked a turning point in the Middle East.
The key point was a precise bombing by US B-2 Spirit aircraft against three of Iran’s main underground nuclear facilities.
However, several questions remain. Is the ceasefire, which Iran has already violated, the culmination of the conflict? Is Iran’s terrorism and nuclear threat over? Is the war over? Will the US be forced to intervene again?
In the midst of the ceasefire process, Tehran again launched missiles at Israel, which said it would respond decisively. Apparently, Iran is only trying to buy time to reorganize its forces.
The Violated Ceasefire
Tel Aviv’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, declared: “In the face of the grave violation of the ceasefire committed by the Iranian regime, we will respond forcefully.”
Hours later, Iran reported the death of its deputy army chief due to Israeli attacks, days before the fragile truce.
The Shiite regime said in a state television address that Iran will continue its nuclear program and defense, and nothing will stop it. This statement answers doubts and questions.
Israel indicates that it does not want an extended war of attrition against Iran. It would be neither prudent nor advisable, as it would entail trillions of dollars in economic and military costs, and worse, the loss of thousands of lives and agonizing tension for their communities. Furthermore, it entails the shipment by the US of military arsenal and essential supplies, something Washington wants to avoid amid its ambitious America First platform.
The objectives of Israel and the US were to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, aimed at militarization under the guise of civilian development, the physical elimination of key Iranian nuclear scientists, and consequently, the eradication of the imminent and potential danger to Tehran on its path to developing nuclear bombs.
These objectives have largely been achieved, but not 100% as the Israelis anticipated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made several points clear in recent days: Israel’s war is not against the oppressed people and friends of Iran, but against its Islamist colonizers. Israel will never allow the Shiite regime to manufacture a nuclear bomb in its stated objective of obliterating the Jewish state. The so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should not physically exist because of all the damage he has done and the thousands of innocent deaths caused by his actions. Netanyahu is determined to see this war through to the end, taking advantage of the fact that Donald J. Trump is in the White House and a fervent admirer and defender of the Israeli people. He demonstrated this in his first term, and less than six months into his second, joined in a historic and unprecedented military action to support Tel Aviv’s offensive.
Discussions with Iran
Trump is a man of peace, but he has reiterated that sometimes achieving peace requires resorting to the force and power of the United States.
At the start of his plans in Washington, the President does not want to embark on a new war similar to that in Ukraine and called for the surrender of Khamenei’s Iranian autocracy, to which Khamenei responded: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will never surrender to foreign aggression.”
The Republican leader verbally announced discussions with Iran next week. For the moment, and this is what analysts perceive, Trump is not seeking Khamenei’s elimination, but rather the regime’s concessions to the West. The ayatollah’s death at this time would represent a false destabilization within Iran, where the opposition is part of various movements with internal fissures or infiltrated by the regime’s counterintelligence forces.
The US knows that Khamenei has a hotbed of opposition within the country and sectors that are consolidating against the cruelty, oppression, and lack of rights and freedoms of a regime that already had to face massive demonstrations in 2022 with the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who died on September 16, 2022, detained and tortured by the police for wearing an “ill-fitting” veil.
The incident triggered one of the largest waves of protests in the history of the Islamic Republic.
In the days following her death, tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to express their outrage, chanting the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom.” The protests lasted for several months and were repressed with extreme violence by Khamenei’s regime.
Reports from independent United Nations organizations report 551 protesters killed by security forces with assault rifles, including 49 women and 68 children. More than 30,000 people were detained, tortured, and sexually assaulted by regime agents.
These demonstrations were repeated in 2023 and 2024, although not on the same scale as in 2022, but thousands of protesters were victims of further atrocious repression in the streets and abuse and torture in prisons.
Pahlavi: The End of Iranian Terrorism
“The end of the regime is near, and now is the time to engage,” said Reza Pahlavi, son of the late, ousted Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his third wife, Farah Diba.
The opposition leader also expressed that he had received indications from members of the security forces that they were willing to switch sides and join the opposition.
Iran is considered the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism and a latent threat to the West for nearly 50 years.
Since 1979, Iran’s primary objective has been to perpetuate domestic state terrorism, develop nuclear weapons, and export its Islamic revolution to every corner of the world, although its (increasingly few) allies and supporters deny this.
The regime provides diverse support, including funding, training, and equipment, to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda factions, the Islamic State, Hamas, and other movements.
These organizations answer to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was founded to protect the fundamentalist Iranian regime.
Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, has provided training, funding, and weapons to militias and political movements in the Middle East: Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and Yemen, in addition to infiltrating spies throughout the region and around the world, including the United States, where 11 Iranians have just been arrested for committing serious identity fraud for non-clerical purposes. Among them is a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard sniper.
The US State Department estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion supporting Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and its allies between 2012 and 2020. In the last year alone, it is estimated that it channeled more than $700 million to Hezbollah terrorists.
As experts claim, Iran has not directly attacked Israel, but rather uses these groups to destroy Tel Aviv and weaken it. Its ultimate plan is a massive attack, through threats or nuclear action, to wipe out Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in his address to the people after the attacks on Tehran began.
“This operation is being carried out to ensure the very survival of the people of Israel and to stem the imminent danger of Iran’s accelerated actions with the ultimate goal of building nine nuclear bombs.”
“With the recent steps to further militarize its nuclear program, they could have achieved this in weeks or a few months, perhaps a year.”
A Firm Israel
“The State of Israel has tolerated the threats and actions of the Islamic regime of Iran for decades, but the time has come to respond to the grave danger that this regime, not its people, poses to the security and stability of the region,” Netanyahu specified.
The October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Israel, which left more than 1,200 dead, hundreds wounded, and 250 hostages, demonstrated the threat that Iran and its terrorist allies pose to the holy people.
Following this escalation, the Houthis in Yemen and terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria launched attacks against Israel and US forces in the Middle East.
With Iranian support, Hamas has used rockets, drones, and funds to wage major war raids against Israel from Gaza in 2008, 2009, 2014, 2021, and its most devastating attack, in October 2023. That morning, Hamas launched a brutal, unprovoked attack against more than 20 Israeli communities. Thirty Americans were among the dead.
The “Islamic Revolution”
How did the Ayatollah clerics come to power in Iran?
The severance of diplomatic relations between Israel and Iran began in 1979 when the Ayatollah regime came to power through the so-called “Islamic Revolution.” This was the first time that an Islamic clergy came to power and took control of the state.
In the 16th century, Shiism, the branch of Islam practiced in Iran, became the country’s official religion. For centuries, the two powers coexisted without problems until the second decade of the 20th century, when disagreements began between the state and the clerical establishment. The state began to increasingly centralize power and assume functions that previously belonged to the Shia clergy, such as education and the establishment of courts of law, which annoyed the clerical leaders. Everything took place under the secular monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi between 1925 and 1979.
The other source of contention was oil, an industry developed by the British, who reaped the greatest profits. Parallel to this situation, nationalist movements emerged demanding the nationalization of Iranian oil, something they attempted to do in 1953. However, Britain and the United States orchestrated a major coup within Iran to restore the Shah’s pro-Western power and reverse the nationalization of oil.
The situation generated a series of discontents that worsened between 1960 and 1963, when the Shah promoted a so-called “white revolution” or “Westernization”: he redistributed territories, nationalized forests, and granted women the right to vote; he raised the minimum age for a woman to consummate a marriage to 18, as well as her right to divorce. This further angered clerical sectors, and this is when the figure of Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini emerged.
Despite modernization in society, the same did not occur at the political level; that is, political democratization did not occur, but rather an autocracy that persecuted the opposition was maintained, creating further fissures in different sectors: nationalists seeking oil; religious leaders dissatisfied with modernization; and intellectual sectors opposed to authoritarianism; and a middle class demanding greater political freedoms. The whole series of grievances escalated in the 1970s, and in 1977, the first middle-class protests began, but the following year, these demonstrations fell under Shia control.
In 1979, the Shah was overthrown, and Khomeini returned from exile and established the new Islamic Republic, where the supreme authority was the Ayatollah. The Revolutionary Guard and a Revolutionary Council were created, and society became even more closed to modern advances: the Theocracy, which remains the regime that reigns in Iran to this day.
From then on, Iran became a Theocracy and adopted an openly anti-Israeli policy. Furthermore, it abandoned the relations it had cultivated with Tel Aviv during the Pahlavi dynasty.
Relations were relatively cordial for most of the Cold War period. The intensification of hostility occurred after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
The Confrontation
The rivalry between the two countries escalated when Israel accused Iran of attacking its ships in the Gulf of Oman. Iran, for its part, blamed Israel for attacking its ships in the Red Sea.
When did Iran’s nuclear program emerge?
Iran’s nuclear program began during the dynasty in 1950, but it wasn’t until 1967 that Iran acquired its first nuclear reactor, which operated with 93% enriched uranium. In 1993, it was converted to operate with 20% enriched uranium.
In 1970, the Iranian parliament ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and in 1974, Shah Reza Pahlavi, a pro-Western leader, created the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and announced the construction of 23 nuclear power plants.
With the Iranian Revolution and the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, diplomatic relations with Washington were severed, while all nuclear projects supported until then by the US and other Western countries were halted. However, the new regime informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was restarting its nuclear programs.
However, on January 19, 1984, the US State Department added Iran to its list of global sponsors of terrorism and imposed sanctions.
Both IAEA members and the US have maintained rigorous control over Iran’s nuclear program over the years.
Faced with clear signs that Iran had begun enriching uranium to more than 20%, in May 2018, President Donald J. Trump announced the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Tehran, signed during the Barack Obama administration in 2015 with seven other Western countries.
Referring to the pact, Trump said: “This was a terrible, one-sided agreement that should never have been made… It did not bring calm, it did not bring peace, and it never will.”
“Under the decaying and ineffective structure of this agreement, the US and none of its allies will be able to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Trump specified.
Saudi Arabia and Israel praised the decision, which also included a message to North Korea.
Negotiations for a new agreement failed because Iran refused to make concessions, and as a result, Washington not only reinstated previous sanctions but also tightened financial regulations.
Regarding oil production, it demanded that Europe minimize its imports of Iranian crude, significantly crippling Tehran’s economy. However, despite the impact, it continued its financial support for terrorist groups, militias, and guerrillas not only in the Middle East but also in other regions of the world, such as Latin America.
Intelligence reports from several countries and the US confirmed the Iranian regime’s expressed intentions to manufacture a nuclear weapon and carry out a massive attack against Israel and any Western country considered an enemy.
And what about Tehran’s nuclear material?
When Trump left the White House in 2021, following a disputed general election, the effectiveness of the sanctions was reduced to a minimum, and Tehran, with no intention of seeking a new nuclear deal with the Biden administration, accelerated its uranium enrichment program to 60%.
Some experts estimate it’s almost 70%, according to anonymous scientific sources inside Iran.
At the same time, it increased its malign influence in the region with the support of Russia and China, which have now sidelined Iran following Israel’s offensive, directly backed by the US, and the subsequent bombing of three major nuclear facilities in its uranium enrichment program: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
Was Operation Midnight Hammer a success? Israel, the US, and nuclear experts claim it was, but left-wing and far-left media outlets around the world are determined—as expected—to discredit the surgical bombing.
“Where is Tehran’s enriched uranium?” media outlets of that political persuasion in the US and around the world are asking.
There are several questions surrounding the whereabouts of the alleged stockpile of 60% enriched uranium. The most logical possibility is that the regime has hidden it in an unknown, top-secret location. And this is a reasonable possibility, despite all the risk, security, and strategy involved in such an action. But perhaps Israel didn’t give it the necessary time to do so, and, without any other option, they immediately responded to the Israeli offensive of June 13 with missiles and intense airstrikes.
The other perspective is that the White House wouldn’t carry out a costly bombing operation with its B2 “bats” without the certainty that at least a significant portion of that uranium, another enriched quantity, and the technology to continue enriching it were not at the three facilities attacked: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. However, it is highly unlikely that the Iranian regime could have been able—in absolute secrecy—to move more than 400 kilograms of uranium, following all the security protocols involved, without Mossad (Israeli intelligence service) agents infiltrating Iran and finding out about the movement.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and multiple experts consulted, including some from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reiterated on June 26 that the US attacks on Iran were a “historic success.”
The Iranian regime itself initially acknowledged this through a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although it changed its version a day later. So did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most interested in the operation’s real success.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqai acknowledged: “Our nuclear facilities have been severely damaged, without a doubt, because they have been subjected to repeated attacks by the Israeli and American aggressors.”
Hegseth lashed out at the leftist media, which insists on discrediting the operation: “US President Donald Trump has created the conditions to end the war. By decimating, annihilating, destroying—choose the word you want—Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” Hegseth stated at a press conference at the Pentagon, alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine.
“By constantly seeking scandals, (…) you are missing historic moments,” he told the harassing journalists.
On Tuesday, US media revealed a preliminary report from US intelligence services, according to which the attacks against Iran ordered by Washington have delayed its nuclear program by several months, but have not completely destroyed it.
Multiple experts agree that the bombs destroyed Iran’s entire nuclear capacity to enrich uranium and set back its nuclear program by several decades, as President Trump has reiterated.
Trump: Iran Could Not Remove Enriched Uranium from Fordow
Analysts also claim that it is likely that Iran removed the enriched uranium from the underground Fordow facility before the bombings took place, but it could have been the other way around. In any case, what matters is that Iran now lacks the means to continue enriching that material to 90% and be able to build a nuclear bomb. That is the real impact.
“If you want to know what’s going on at Fordow, you’d better go there and take a really big shovel, because there’s no one under there right now,” Hegseth told one of the reporters about the underground nuclear facility.
Hegseth quoted US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who stated the day before that “Iran’s nuclear facilities were destroyed.”
He also cited a statement by CIA chief John Ratcliffe, who asserted “that Iran’s nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted attacks.”
According to Ratcliffe, a “historically reliable and accurate” source of information indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
For his part, Trump stated that Iran was unable to remove the nuclear material from Fordow.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wants to know if Iran still has the stockpile of 408.6 kg of 60% enriched uranium that its staff last saw on June 10.
That amount, if enriched to 90%, could theoretically be used to make more than nine nuclear weapons.
But the other question after the Israeli and US offensive is whether Tehran still has the technology it needs to continue enriching the ore.
If Iran can salvage anything from its uranium enrichment plants in the future, it will be “a task of years,” not months. “For now, Iran’s ability to operate (nuclear) reactors and centrifuges is completely destroyed,” argued Randy Alan George, the US Army Chief of Staff. Iran does have enriched uranium, but it has no way to develop it to 90% or use it for other purposes because the facilities were destroyed,” he stressed.
During a meeting of governors the day after the US attack, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi said that given the explosive charge used and the centrifuges’ extremely vibration-sensitive nature, significant damage is expected.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), was quoted by CNN as saying that “the destruction of the underground chamber is quite possible” and that “there could be considerable damage to the enrichment chamber and the adjacent support chambers.”
“The larger, central entry holes in the two clusters at Fordow have irregular shapes, suggesting that multiple munitions impacted in the same location,” said N. R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions specialist and director of the research firm Armament Research Services.
Satellite images also show significant changes in the color of the mountainside where the facility is located.
After the attack, the Israeli prime minister said in a televised address: “Congratulations, President Trump. Your courageous decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome power of the United States will change the course of history.”
“During Operation Rising Lion, Israel has done truly incredible things. But in tonight’s action against nuclear facilities, the United States has been truly unsurpassed. It did what no other country in the world has been able to do. History will remember that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the most dangerous weapons on the planet.”
“His leadership today created a historic turning point that can help the Middle East and other regions move toward a future of prosperity and peace.”
The Work Is Not Done
For Israel, the work is not done despite the surgical bombing of Iran’s main nuclear sites and the effectiveness of its attacks on strategic Shiite sites.
However, Netanyahu specified on June 25 that the Fordow nuclear facility, one of the three complexes hit by the US attack, is “out of service.”
“The attack on Fordo has destroyed the facility’s vital infrastructure and put the facility’s ability to enrich uranium out of service for years,” the prime minister said in a statement released by his office.
Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament voted on June 25 to suspend cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog (IAEA).
“The International Atomic Energy Agency has put its international credibility at stake,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told state television.
In his statement, Ghalibaf announced that the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization will suspend its cooperation with the IAEA, raising further suspicions.
For his part, Trump believes or has publicly stated that the Israeli attacks and the US air operation, which effectively dropped GBU/57 B bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, marked the decisive turning point in the conflict.
The 12 bunker-busting devices, weighing 16,000 kilograms, launched by six B-2 Spirit bombers, penetrated a concrete structure 18 meters (60 feet) deep or 61 meters (200 feet) deep, before exploding. They are the only ones manufactured in the world capable of causing such underground destruction.
Moments before the attack, and in a coordinated and deterrent strategy, or so-called diversionary maneuver, US submarines fired dozens of Tomahawk missiles that landed at various points in Iran.
According to other reports, the Iranians’ main nuclear facilities are believed to be located at a depth of between 80 and 90 meters.
In the midst of the conflict, Netanyahu went further and proposed eliminating Iran’s so-called supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The possibility of his physical elimination remains open.
And the US could execute the same attack at an extreme moment: an Israeli attack with precise intelligence guidance from Washington, or the Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency), whose role has been central within Tehran during the major Israeli military operation.
Israel, which has received full support from President Trump’s administration, seeks to completely eliminate the Iranian regime and achieve radical political change for regional stability.
The Iranian regime is the head of the snake, and by cutting it off, the other terrorist allies under its protection are automatically deactivated, without funding, arms supplies, or organized operational capacity on the ground.
Tel Aviv has been at war for almost two years. First against the terrorist group Hamas, then against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and now against Tehran.
“Israel and the US do not want Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb under any circumstances. Why? Iran has declared more than once that it wants to destroy the State of Israel, and because the Iranian Parliament has voted a clause in its Constitution that calls the destruction of the State of Israel the government’s duty,” emphasizes Joseph Hage, a political analyst on Middle East and counterterrorism issues.
The keys to the US bombing
Iran’s nuclear program has always represented an “existential danger” for Israel. “Since 1979, the entire Iranian leadership has threatened and taught its people in doctrine the destruction of the ‘great Satan of the USA’ and the ‘little Satan of Israel,'” explains Hage.
Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed receiving Iran’s 408 kilograms of enriched uranium in Russia and delivering it according to its needs for civilian and peaceful use. Tehran flatly rejected the suggestion, as well as the concessions in a deal that was negotiated over the 60-day deadline given by President Trump and which the Iranians viewed as a distraction, not with any responsibility, and even less with any desire to finalize a pact.
These were the keys to Israel launching a massive attack on strategic Iranian military and nuclear sites on June 13.
With the exception of Turkey and a lukewarm Pakistan, Iran was left alone in its policy of exporting radical Islamism. At least that was the perception during Israel’s offensive, backed by Washington.
Russia, China and North Korea, Iran’s main allies, remained outside the war and Washington’s military intervention.
Even the new interim government in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates sided with Israel. Some shot down dozens of Iranian drones and missiles targeting Tel Aviv, while others lent their airspace to the US and Israel.
United States President Donald J. Trump’s tour was not only a shower of economic investment for North America, but also a strategic coordination by Washington in the region to protect Israel.
The Iran chapter is not over, and the coming weeks will be decisive not only for Israel but also for the immediate and future fate of the historically turbulent Middle East.
Sources: The New York Times, Fox News, Newsmax, The Western Journal, CNN, Pentagon Reports, White House website, BBC. AFP, Reuters, and EFE news agencies.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).