Questions That Need to Be Answered before Trump Bombs Iran

War should always be the last resort, only after all other strategies for achieving U.S. national interests have been exhausted.

The mullahs ruling Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. On this U.S. foreign policy objective, I agree with President Trump and all previous presidents, Democrats and Republicans alike. The United States could easily deter a nuclear attack from the theocrats in Tehran. But a nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran would constitute an existential threat to our democratic ally, Israel. That is unacceptable. A nuclear-armed Iran would also trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, prompting Saudi Arabia to join the race first, with others following suit. That is unacceptable, too.

If the goal is clear, the best strategy for denying Iran a nuclear weapon is not. It is a contested question that deserves a full-fledged debate. Bombing Iran is one option, but that is a very costly solution. War should always be the last resort, if for no other reason than that people die in wars. In this current Israel-Iran war, Iranians and Israelis have already died. (Yes, I care about Iranians dying; most of them are innocents living under a repressive dictatorship.) If the United States joins this war, we will kill people, too.

Additionally, wars rarely unfold as planned. There are always unanticipated secondary and tertiary effects. As we learned bitterly in the Obama administration in Libya, even surgical bombing campaigns with no boots on the ground can produce unexpected consequences. Our bombing of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 did stop the anticipated slaughter of civilians in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, but it also triggered a civil war that still lingers to this day. The unanticipated consequences of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq were even more dire.

Maybe at some point in the future, President Trump will have exhausted all other options for stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and will have to order a military strike on the centrifuges enriching uranium deep underground at Fordow. But before that moment, the American public deserves answers to a lot of questions. So far, as evidenced by the lack of briefings for our members of Congress serving on the intelligence committees in the House and the Senate, we have not received those answers.

Here are my questions:

First, is Iran really weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon? Is the nuclear threat imminent? In public, the U.S. intelligence community has answered that question definitely, and the answer is no. Prime Minister Netanyahu has asserted that such a threat was imminent, but he has not provided evidence to support this claim. Moreover, he has been making the same assertion for many decades now, dating back to the 1990s. We need more than just Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opinion. Trump recently sided with Netanyahu’s take and dismissed the assessment of his own intelligence community, including a public and shocking rebuke of his Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard. (This episode reminded me of the Putin-Trump summit in Helsinki in 2018 when Trump sided with Putin and against the U.S. intelligence community regarding the overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.) The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did issue a damning report about Iran’s cheating last week. But the Director General of this very agency also stated unequivocally last week that “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, points to a red line he drew on a graphic of a bomb while discussing Iran during an address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2012, in New York City. He explicitly stated then that Iran was possibly “a few weeks away” from having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.

What does Trump know that the IAEA, the agency’s director, and the director of the U.S. national intelligence do not? Did something change in the intelligence recently that compelled Trump to flip? If so, Trump should declassify that intelligence, so the American people have a better sense of the threat. Before signing up for another war, the American people have the right to know. Right now, the American people are very skeptical about the need to get involved in another conflict in the Middle East. In a recent YouGov poll, just 16 percent of Americans support doing so. Declassifying this intelligence, if it exists, would help build broader support for a military strike.

Second, if the Israeli strikes have been successful against Iran’s nuclear facilities, doesn’t that push out the clock for when Iran can obtain a nuclear weapon and buy time for diplomacy? Trump set the deadline for 60 days to reach a deal before the Israeli strike. But now, after the Israeli bombing campaign, there should be a longer window to at least try to negotiate a new deal. (Yes, I am aware that the Fordow enrichment plan is the key to producing enriched uranium. It is still intact, but the Israeli strikes must have had some impact on Iran's nuclear weapons program. Otherwise, why did they carry them out, knowing ahead of time that they could not destroy Fordow?) Today, the Iranian government is in a much weaker position than last week. And more broadly, after successful Israeli campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah, the regime in Tehran has never been in a weaker position. To stay in power, they may need to cut a deal now. Before attacking Iran, Trump must at least test out that proposition, and do so over weeks and months, not hours and days. He might be able to get an even better deal, such as keeping all enrichment activity out of Iran (see Phil Gordon’s creative ideas for how here).

Third, does the United States have the military capacity to achieve the mission of destroying the centrifuges buried at Fordow? Listening to the experts commenting on this issue in the public domain, I believe we do. But some skeptics have raised questions (read one of those assessments here). Through congressional hearings, the American people deserve to have more information about the fidelity of this mission. The worst outcome would be a failed attack. That would make the United States look weak, not only in the Middle East but worldwide.

Fourth, what is happening in U.S.-Israel relations? Prime Minister Netanyahu has been arguing for decades about the need to bomb Iran. I heard him personally give a passionate speech on this subject in person decades ago. Until last week, U.S. presidents—Democrats and Republicans alike—have constrained Israel from doing so. Just last month, Trump appeared to be doing the same. According to reporting in The New York Times, “During a strained phone call in late May, Mr. Trump again warned the Israeli leader against a unilateral attack…” Yet, on June 12-13, Netanyahu ignored Trump and proceeded with the attack anyway. That in and of itself makes me nervous. Allies should be working together. In addition, it is also a sign of weakness that Trump could not persuade Netanyahu to wait. That makes me nervous, too. Trump likes to brag about all the wars that didn’t happen on his watch. (He, of course, is wrong about that. The war in Ukraine started in 2014 and continued throughout his entire tenure as president, and then escalated in 2022.) Well, this one happened on his watch. He could not stop it.

At the same time, I also recognize Israel’s right to self-defense. Maybe the Israeli government, based on its intelligence, assessed that it had to go to war now. But do we? Shouldn’t the U.S. president and the American people make their own judgments and decisions about our national interests, including our independent assessment of how imminent the threat of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is? Just because Israel cannot take out Fordow, does that obligate us to do so, and do it right now? (I do not believe the argument advocating for action now because Iran’s air defense is debilitated and will soon recover. They will rebuild and re-deploy, but not immediately.) When I served at the National Security Council under President Obama from 2009 to 2012, I recall the intense criticism of our administration for “leading from behind.” These attacks arose from a New Yorker interview with a staffer who misrepresented our policy (Obama was furious.) But if Trump now feels compelled to finish the job that Israel started but could not finish, that sure feels like leading from behind. This is not a good way to make foreign policy.

Protest against the United States’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known as the Iran Nuclear Deal) in front of the United States Embassy in Tehran in May 2018. Trump withdrew the U.S. participation in the JCPOA in his first term. Photo by Hamed Jafarnejad via Wiki Commons.

Fifth, what happens the day after? What new threats to American national security will emerge after a bombing campaign? What happens to the enriched uranium when it is bombed? Will it get released into the atmosphere? As Ranking Senate Defense Appropriator Chris Coons (D-Del.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Appropriations Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Senate Armed Services Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) rightfully wrote yesterday:

As President Trump reportedly considers expanding U.S. engagement in the war, we are deeply concerned about a lack of preparation, strategy, and clearly defined objectives, and the enormous risk to Americans and civilians in the region. Iran has signaled that it would retaliate against American personnel if the United States participates in military strikes. More than 40,000 U.S. servicemembers are stationed in more than a dozen countries around the Middle East, all within striking distance of Iran and its proxies.

Sixth, if we bomb now, what are the consequences for the Iranian people living under a deeply repressive dictatorship? With my Hoover colleagues, Larry Diamond and Abbas Milani, I have been arguing for decades that democratic regime change in Iran is the only way to permanently eliminate the nuclear and terrorist threat from Tehran to our allies and partners in the region (see our work going back to 2005 here; read Milani’s most recent essay here). Does an American military strike make democratic change more or less likely? In the past, I argued that a military strike would produce a rally-around-the-flag effect in Iran and strengthen the current dictatorship suppressing opposition to the government of the Iranian people. But maybe times have changed? For instance, the U.S. bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999 initially produced that rally-around-the-flag effect and weakened the democratic opposition. However, the following year, the democratic movement ousted former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević after he attempted to rig a free and fair election. Are Iranians so sick of their brutal dictatorship that the same could happen in Iran? Would Iran’s theocrats and hardliners become stronger? Or would a U.S. bombing campaign produce the breakdown of the government, ethnic conflict, and civil war in a country of ninety million people, as it happened in Libya in 2011? The American people deserve to know, or at least hear, the intelligence community's best assessment.

Finally, what are the consequences for other American national interests around the world if we bomb Iran now? This is the question that concerns me the most. Already in the first months of Trump's second term, governments and societies worldwide are turning against us. They do not like Trump’s tariffs. They detest his imperial plans to annex Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. In Europe and other parts of the free world, people are appalled by Trump’s embrace of Putin and abandonment of democratic Ukraine. Trump’s indifference to the suffering in Gaza has angered communities in the Middle East and elsewhere. Public opinion polls show that the United States is becoming increasingly unpopular and isolated internationally. Bombing Iran will only accelerate these trends dramatically. Perhaps this is the price we must pay, but it will be a very heavy price.

And the biggest winner, of course, will be the Communist Party of China, which in my mind is a much greater threat to American security, prosperity, and values than the Fordow facility. I wrote a whole book about it—Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New World Disorder. Xi and China will appear as the leader and country that support sovereignty, international law, and the global order. Trump and the United States will not. Putin would benefit too, as our new preemptive war with Iran will make his preemptive war in Ukraine look more normal. Our launching of a new preemptive war now will also help make a future Chinese preemptive war against Taiwan look more legitimate. In a lawless, Hobbesian world, it is just what great powers do, as some will say. That does not serve U.S. national interests.

I will stop at seven questions for now. I could ask many more. My main point is that Americans should examine the pros and cons of the decision to go to war more seriously and deliberatively. The U.S. Congress should lead the way. Trump owes it to the American people to explain why this war is necessary and not just assume that we should trust his intuition. I have an open mind. I am willing to assess the evidence and conclude that such an attack is vital to our national interests. However, I currently do not see a compelling argument or evidence for war tomorrow. We have rushed into wars in the past. We do not need to do so again.