What will happen if the United States bombs Iran?

A B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber (Photo by Jesus Olarte/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Trump campaigned as a peacemaker, promising to "end the endless foreign wars." Less than six months into his presidency, things have changed.

On June 13, Israel began bombing Iran, hitting suspected nuclear sites and a variety of other targets. Israel claims the operation is necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Trump initially opposed the Israeli bombing campaign, arguing that the issue could be resolved diplomatically. "I don’t want them going in, because I think it would blow it…we’ve had very good discussions with Iran," Trump said. "I prefer the more friendly path."

On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that "Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal." Trump predicted that "we will have PEACE, soon."

Nevertheless, Israel is pushing the United States to join the war, saying it needs American help to destroy Iran's nuclear program. Specifically, Israel wants the United States to use its bunker-busting bombs to destroy the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in Iran, which is built deep underground.

Trump appears to be coming around to the idea. On Tuesday, he stopped talking about diplomacy and demanded Iran's "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!" By Wednesday, Trump said "nobody knows" if he will involve the United States in the growing conflict. "I may do it, I may not do it," Trump told reporters at the White House.

What will happen if Trump decides to bomb Iran? Popular Information discussed the issue with Joe Cirincione, a non-proliferation expert who has studied Iran for decades.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Popular Information: What is the context for the current situation in Iran?

Joe Cirincione: For the past 25 years, there's been a debate about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program. Iran claims it's peaceful, just for the manufacturing of nuclear fuel. The problem is that the same machines that can enrich uranium to low levels, for fuel rods, can enrich it to high levels for weapons. So you have to ask the question, "Do you trust Iran?" Clearly, we do not. So, how do you solve this?

Benjamin Netanyahu has always been a proponent of military action because he saw that as the only solution to the nuclear program. He also believes it would be a way to eliminate the Iranian regime, which he considers an existential threat to Israel. Not just the nuclear program, but the Iranian regime itself.

In 2014, the United States solved the problem. We reached an interim agreement that then, in 2015, became a permanent agreement that permitted Iran to do limited enrichment, but blocked all its paths to a bomb. It did this by severely limiting the amount of enrichment they could do by creating the most intrusive inspection regime ever negotiated. I've been working on non-proliferation my entire career. I have never seen an agreement as strong as the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. It solved the problem. It stopped Iran's path to a bomb. It stopped a new war in the Middle East.

In 2018, Donald Trump pulled out of that agreement despite the entreaties of all major allies — with the exception of Israel — and the advice of the military intelligence leaders in the United States, who argued that the deal was working and there was no reason to pull out. So that brings us to the present moment. Netanyahu — who was an opponent of the deal, who was one of the people who convinced Trump to pull out — and President Trump are now trying to fix a problem they created.

PI: What is the best assessment of Iran's current nuclear capability and ambitions?

JC: With the deal, it would have taken Iran at least a year to break out of the agreement and produce enough material for one bomb, and then perhaps another year or two to turn that material into an actual functioning weapon. Now, within a matter of one or two weeks, it could produce enough highly-enriched uranium for the cores of ten bombs, and we don't know how long it will take them to turn those into weapons. We've lost a lot of our inspection capability over the past few years. So, today, Iran is a threshold nuclear weapons state. That is the situation.

Netanyahu says that he had to take this action to preempt an Iranian attack being planned on Israel. But no such attack was being planned. The U.S. intelligence agencies have testified they detected no evidence of Iranian plans to attack Israel. Intelligence officials detected no sign, as recently as this spring, that Iran had restarted a nuclear weapons program that it did have in the late 1990s and ended in 2003. There is no evidence that they were making a dash for the bomb.

What the Israeli attack did preempt was the efforts of the Trump administration to negotiate a new deal. Those talks, which were about to enter their sixth round last weekend, were fairly close to a deal, according to President Trump's own statements last week. By attacking Iran last Thursday, Netanyahu preempted a diplomatic solution.

PI: What do you think Trump is being told by people who are encouraging him to bomb Iran?

JC: If all of this makes you feel like you're getting deja vu about [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq, you're right. Netanyahu is using the same playbook that he, and neoconservatives in the United States, used in 2002 and 2003 to convince the American public to go to war with Iraq. They are claiming that military action is necessary before the smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud. It wasn't true then, and it's not true now. But it's the justification for a war they want to wage for other reasons, and those other reasons are to overthrow the rule of Ayatollah Khamenei and the Muslim clerics. This is a regime change war. And if there was any doubt, the expanded target set that Israel has developed over the past six days indicates that. It very quickly moved from an initial set of targets on the nuclear facilities and some of the military officials to a widespread campaign of political assassination through bombing and destruction of political, economic and even cultural targets. This is clearly aimed at destabilizing and overthrowing the regime.

But I wouldn't count on overthrowing this government. This is a deeply unpopular government. But it is now being attacked by its arch enemies, and you are seeing a rally-round-the-flag effect in Iran. The war, for the moment, is strengthening the Iranian regime, not weakening it.

PI: Is there a chance that this bombing campaign could actually either end or set back Iran's nuclear program?

JC: It could definitely set it back. It could possibly destroy it, but it could never end it. Iran has now had over 25 years of experience in the production of nuclear materials. You can't bomb that away. [Iran] knows how to enrich uranium, and most likely how to turn that uranium into a weapon. It's just a question of how quickly they could reconstitute that capability. Two years? Three years? Four years? Even if there was a complete destruction of all of Iran's enrichment capability, when the war was over, Iran could start building it back up again.

PI: Trump today said he might bomb Iran, or he might not. He's thinking about it. Does Trump have the authority to do that unilaterally?

JC: The U.S. Constitution clearly requires Congress to authorize any war. Under the War Powers Act, presidents are allowed to commit U.S. troops into combat in order to protect the lives of Americans and U.S. interests. No American lives are being threatened by Iran currently. Do we oppose this government? Absolutely. Would we like to see it replaced? Sure. Are they attacking the United States in such a way that we have to go to war to prevent those attacks? Absolutely not. Are they about to become a nuclear power? No, they are not. Are there alternatives to military action? Absolutely. We were doing them until Thursday.

PI: If the United States does join Israel, would you expect Iran to strike U.S. targets in response?

JC: Absolutely. They could directly attack U.S. bases in the Middle East. Their missile ranges have trouble reaching Israel, but they have no trouble hitting targets closer to home.

If you're Iran's political, military, and intelligence leadership, and two other countries are threatening to eliminate you, personally and organizationally… What are you going to do? This is the definition of an existential crisis. You're going to do everything you can to survive. What have you got to lose?

There's a whole list of things they could do, including closing the Straits of Hormuz. By closing the Straits of Hormuz, you cut off one-fifth of the world's oil supply overnight. That will send stock markets crashing. That could tip the world into a global recession, even a depression.

This is why no previous president has attacked Iran. There's a reason for it. It's not because they weren't courageous enough. It wasn't because they didn't have the capabilities. It's because they understood that the enemy gets a vote. You could have stunning initial tactical success, and you could still end up in a quagmire with global consequences that will sink you.

PI: Is there an off-ramp from this crisis?

Yes. Trump is an erratic, unstable, weak leader. He doesn't really know what to do, which is why he can switch positions on a dime. He could pull the plug and restart negotiations.

But don't think about this as some grand strategy, that he's planning all this out. He's playing checkers, not chess. This is one move at a time.