Then, on Monday, the Iranians responded as I said they would a week ago and in my conversation with TED’s Helen Walters the morning after the US strikes. Tehran launched a well-telegraphed, symbolic missile salvo against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military base in the region and the most heavily fortified within striking range of Iran. This sprawling air base, home to 10,000 American troops, is in the middle of the desert, far away from civilian areas, and bristling with missile defenses. Tehran gave the US advance warning via Qatar to minimize the potential for casualties and damage. It had to put on enough of a show to convince folks at home it had punched back, while hoping Trump would take the hint and refrain from retaliating.
It wasn’t either side’s first rodeo. At the end of his first term, Trump ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the popular war hero and head of the Iranian defense forces. Iran’s response then? A performative, pre-announced missile attack against a US base in Iraq that had minimal impact. Trump ignored it, both sides declared victory, and the whole thing blew over.
The same choreography played out this week. With ample warning of the impending missile strike, the US evacuated nonessential personnel and ordered everyone else to shelter in place. Not a single person was hurt. Just like last time,Tehran sold the fireworks to its people as a major success, claiming they had "destroyed" the US base. Most Iranians – under an internet blackout – were none the wiser that the attack had been a dud by design. Engineered to cause no deaths, no damage, just theater.
Trump sprinted for the exit ramp, eager to wrap things up and avoid the political risks of a further US military commitment he never wanted in the first place. Instead of retaliating, he thanked Iran (yes, really) for the “early notice.” Two hours later, he announced that he had brokered a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” between Iran and Israel. The “12 Day War”, as he dubbed it, was over. “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!” he posted.
The ceasefire almost collapsed before it even went into effect, with Israel launching air strikes on Tehran and Iran responding with a missile barrage on Israel early Tuesday. A clearly annoyed Trump said he was "not happy with Israel" and urged Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to stand down in all-caps. It was a rare public rebuke from Israel’s best friend on the global stage. But if there’s one thing that pisses Trump off, it’s being made to look weak.
The US president has staked his reputation on this fragile ceasefire holding. Trump wants a clean win. He cares about being seen as powerful and in control, about low oil prices, and about ending wars and keeping the US out of them. A resumption of the fighting would jeopardize all that. That’s why he (successfully) pressured Israel to scale back planned strikes against Iran on Tuesday, and why he’ll keep trying to discourage either side from taking actions that might restart the war.
For the time being, everyone seems content to declare victory and keep the peace.
That includes Iran, the undisputed loser of the 12-Day War. Everything about how the conflict played out was a display of Iranian weakness. Of the three belligerents, Iran is by far the least capable and most vulnerable – and it is keenly aware of it. But the loss of all its deterrents also makes it the most risk-averse. Tehran’s goal has always been regime survival, not victory. And the Islamic Republic can indeed claim it survived a direct war against both Israel and the US while inflicting unprecedented pain on the Israeli home front and preserving key parts of its nuclear program. Khamenei has been humiliated and his days as supreme leader may well be numbered, but the regime gets to live to fight another day, even if weakened. A ceasefire gives Tehran breathing room to focus on internal security and a chance to rebuild its capabilities.
For his part, Netanyahu wasn’t particularly interested in a ceasefire – certainly not as much as the Iranians or Trump. But Bibi already got more than he could’ve hoped for out of this war. He dealt a massive blow to Iran’s military, ballistic, and nuclear capabilities. He got the US to strike at the one hardened site Israel couldn’t reach. And he did it all while keeping Trump onside and bolstering his domestic political standing. In the course of two weeks, he went from the brink of government collapse to nigh untouchable.
As for Trump, this is arguably the biggest foreign policy win of his second term to date. The president can take credit for degrading Iran’s nuclear program and enabling Israel to severely degrade its military and ballistic capabilities, all with no blowback to the US and without getting dragged into a broader war. True, Iran had never been weaker and its threats had never been emptier, but Trump still had the willingness to call the ayatollah’s bluff. And so far, the gamble seems to have paid off. One of the world’s most dangerous rogue states is significantly weaker today than it was two weeks ago (not to mention before Oct 7, 2023), and America is no worse for wear.
But how big a win this turns out to be in the longer term remains an open question.
For starters, it’s unclear just how much of Iran’s nuclear program was actually destroyed. Trump insists Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were “obliterated” … as he would. Iran says most of its enrichment capabilities survived the attacks and its 400-kilogram stockpile of highly-enriched uranium – enough for 9-10 warheads – was moved to secure locations in advance … as they would. But a leaked early assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the strikes failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites and only set back the program by a few months. And preliminary Israeli damage assessments have also cast doubt on the effectiveness of the Fordow strike, estimating the setback to the Iranian nuclear program at two years.
The IAEA isn’t sure, unless Iran lets them into the facilities. It’s plausible that the bulk of Iran’s fissile material stockpile was saved. Satellite photos show truck convoys outside Fordow days before the strikes, and moving uranium is fairly easy. Not so for centrifuges, which are large, fragile, and hard to transport. Maybe Iran managed to move a few. But thousands? Unlikely. Which means that even if Iran’s stockpile survived intact, its ability to enrich to weapons-grade level has probably taken a hit. They also lost their uranium conversion facility at Isfahan – critical for processing uranium “yellowcake” into the metallic and gaseous forms needed to produce a bomb.
Even if it turned out that the program was severely degraded, Iran could rebuild it in secret. The US-Israeli strikes may have slowed the timeline to a bomb by six months to several years, but they also multiplied Iran’s motivation to get one. If you’re sitting in Tehran, the lesson from this war is simple: being a nuclear-threshold power is not enough – the only way to avoid being bombed is to become un-bombable.
Strategically, that makes the US-Israeli tactical victory potentially counterproductive. That’s the thing: the military option was never a permanent solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That was true before this war and it’s true now. You can bomb the program back a few years, but unless you’re prepared to keep bombing them indefinitely, the only real way to stop Iran from building a nuke is to get them to sign a deal.
Trump came into office this term understanding that diplomacy was the way to go. He had a real shot at success, too. Iran’s historic weakness post-Oct. 7 made it ripe for a reasonable negotiated agreement – meaning anything short of zero enrichment with at least some upside. If he had offered limited (but non-zero) domestic enrichment for civilian purposes, no sunset clauses, and sanctions relief, the Iranians probably would’ve taken it. Alas, he was unwilling to budge on zero enrichment and ultimately got pushed into a corner by the Israeli strikes to take the military route instead.
It may work out in the short term – the only term Trump usually cares about (which is a bigger, more structural problem). Long term? It’s likely to push Iran to go all-in on covertly acquiring a nuclear deterrent to ensure regime survival. That would take time – they need to rebuild underground facilities, reconstitute their centrifuges, enrich in secret. But it would happen out of the IAEA’s sight and beyond easy reach. We’d likely only find out when we were presented with a fait accompli: a working bomb.
Netanyahu has already warned that Israel will strike again if it detects any Iranian attempts to rebuild its program. Even if Tehran doesn’t dash for a bomb, Israel intends to continue “mowing the grass” in Iran whenever threats and opportunities arise, as it has in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. “We have concluded a significant chapter, but the campaign against Iran is not over,” the IDF chief said yesterday.
Trump won’t love his ceasefire getting broken. But the real question is, what’s he going to do to stop it? And the answer is probably not much. He’s willing to lean on Israel for now to declare mission accomplished and claim the W. But he won’t stick his neck out to rein in Bibi forever. And if the fighting resumes, Trump will back Israel regardless of whether it’s Israel who starts it.
The 12-Day War is over, but the story will be continued.