How will President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear program affect the US position in the Middle East?
On June 13, as US-Iran talks stalled, Israel began striking key military and scientific targets across Iran from the air in an effort to dismantle the country’s nuclear program and decapitate the top ranks of its military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Iran responded to Operation Rising Lion with waves of ballistic missile strikes on Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Even after achieving effective dominance in Iranian airspace, Israel could not fully demolish its nuclear program without US military support. Consequently, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu encouraged President Donald Trump’s administration to intervene and “finish the job.”
Faced with the difficult choice of standing by its twin objectives of ending Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and avoiding another war in the Middle East, the White House considered its options. On June 21, President Trump ordered a limited strike on three of Iran’s primary nuclear facilities—Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. Operation Midnight Hammer was followed by a carefully signaled and choreographed Iranian attack on the Al-Udeid US air force bases in Qatar on June 23, followed by an uneasy ceasefire with both the United States and Israel.
The overall impact on Iran’s uranium enrichment and weaponization capabilities and timeline remains unclear. Following some confusion about the start of the ceasefire, there are also doubts about whether it can be sustained. To cap it off, President Trump has also announced that US-Iran talks will continue this week. Whatever the outcome, the strike’s diplomatic shockwaves are reverberating far and wide throughout the region.
Is there a “new normal” in the Middle East, and what might that mean for the US regional position? Can a new US-Iran nuclear agreement be hammered out under these circumstances? Finally, how are Russia and China responding to the crisis, and what are the differences in their approaches?
In this episode of Three Questions, Paul Saunders speaks with Joshua Yaphe, a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest. For fifteen years, Joshua was the lead analyst for the Arabian Peninsula at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, drafting analytical products, briefing policymakers, hosting roundtables, and serving as a key piece of institutional memory on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, and Yemen. He has been a frequent participant in Track Two forums on the Middle East and a guest speaker at numerous academic and think tank events in the United States, Europe, and the Gulf.
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About the Speakers:
Joshua Yaphe is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and was a Senior Analyst for the Arabian Peninsula at the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He has a Ph.D. in History from American University in Washington, DC, and is the author of Saudi Arabia and Iraq as Friends and Enemies: Borders, Tribes and a History Shared, currently out in paperback through the University of Liverpool Press. In 2020, he was a Visiting Fellow at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, and from 2022 to 2024 he served as a visiting faculty member at the National Intelligence University.
Paul J. Saunders is President of the Center for the National Interest and a member of its board of directors. He is also Publisher of The National Interest. His expertise spans US foreign and security policy, energy security and climate change, US-Russia relations and Russian foreign policy, and US relations with Japan and South Korea. Saunders is a Senior Advisor at the Energy Innovation Reform Project, where he served as President from 2019 to 2024. He has been a member of EIRP’s board of directors since 2013 and served as chairman from 2014 to 2019. At EIRP, Saunders has focused on the collision between great power competition and the energy transition, including such issues as energy security, energy technology competition, and climate policy in a divided world. In this context, he has engaged deeply in energy and climate issues in the Indo-Pacific region, especially US relations with Japan and South Korea. His most recent project at EIRP is an assessment of Russia’s evolving role in the global energy system.
Image: President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, April 7, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Emily J. Higgins)
