Despite the precision and scale of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, Tehran’s regime is likely to rebuild, intensify proxy warfare, and remain committed to its long-term atomic ambitions.
The US military strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities in late June presented a picture of military excellence that surprised Iran and much of the international community. The operation featured the most extensive use to date of B-2 spirit bombers in any single operation to attack Iranian targets at Fordow and Natanz with highly accurate GBU-57 (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bombs.
In addition, a US submarine fired some thirty Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) against surface infrastructure targets at Isfahan. According to Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan (Razin) Cane, Operation Midnight Hammer involved more than 125 aircraft, including seven B-2 stealth bombers, numerous fourth and fifth-generation fighters, and dozens of refueling tankers. Some 75 precision-guided munitions were used in Midnight Hammer, including fourteen GBU-57 MOPs used for the first time in combat.
What Are the After-Effects of the US Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Sites?
How much of an impact the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would have on Iran’s future strategy and policy is a larger and more important topic. Authoritarian regimes based on solipsistic definitions of their historical achievements and myopic expectations of manifest destiny think in terms of years or even generations.
For Iran, the United States is the Great Satan and Israel its puppet. Iran also aspires to become the dominant power in the Middle East, eventually surpassing its Sunni rival, Saudi Arabia. In the view of the ayatollahs, becoming a nuclear weapons state would validate Iran’s claim to regional hegemony and establish a deterrent against Israeli nuclear coercion or first use. Mated to longer-range ballistic missiles, Iran’s nukes could cast a coercive or deterrent shadow not only across the Middle East but also over much of Europe and even North America.
Israel’s twelve-day war against Iran had set back its military capabilities even before the United States entered the fray. Significant destruction was inflicted on Iran’s ballistic missile force, its air defenses, its command and control, and its military and political leadership.
Nevertheless, any expectation of a change in attitude on the part of the regime, whether regarding its political ambitions or its determination to rebuild its military capabilities, is likely to be a disappointment. Just the opposite should be assumed. Theocracy and the elite army units in Iran appear to have a firm grip on the instruments of national power and the ruthlessness to suppress any domestic dissent.
Is Iran’s Current Government in Trouble?
On the other hand, US intelligence estimates in 1978 failed to see the Islamic revolution coming around the bend until it exploded into the seizure of the American embassy, the defenestration of the Shah, and the seizure of US hostages. Defeat in war, if it is deep enough to shake the self-confidence of powerful constituents in domestic politics, can have a corrosive effect on regime stability, as in Russia in the aftermath of the Russo–Japanese War.
Doubtless, Vladimir Putin remembers this, as well as the fate of the USSR; thus, his determination to avoid any outcome in Ukraine that appears to be a Russian defeat.
The Iranian leadership also faces the challenge of rebuilding its devastated proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere. Going forward, Israel’s military and political grip on Gaza will make it nearly impossible for Hamas to come back as strong as it was before October 7, 2023.
Hezbollah was both a considerable conventional and asymmetrical military opponent as recently as 2006, but it now finds itself challenged to mount anything more than sporadic raids. The Houthis vow determination to consider their war of attrition against maritime traffic in the Red Sea, but recent US additions to our maritime strike power in the region cannot be encouraging to Houthi rebels.
On the other hand, history shows that the capacity of unconventional forces can be rebuilt rather quickly compared to the more expensive hard power of their opponents. Further, asymmetrical warriors need not confront directly the sinews of their enemies’ military power. They can sting like mosquitoes through indirect harassment using cyberwar, terrorism against civilian targets, economic disruption, and by selective use of new age technology for harassment and distraction (e.g., drones) as well as destruction per se. Nor should it be assumed that Iran will be unable to reconstitute its nuclear program in good time, absent any negotiated agreement to freeze its development, as between the Islamic Republic and representatives of the international community (presumably under IAEA or equivalent monitoring and inspection).
How Will the Trump Administration Deal with Iran Going Forward?
The Trump administration disparages the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) agreement mediated by the Obama administration in 2015 to limit Iran’s nuclear activity.
Still, this agreement would have provided a breathing space of almost a decade before Iran reached the threshold of near-weaponization alleged by the United States and other observers. Even now, the exact degree of damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities and supporting infrastructure is a matter of some debate, apparently, even within the US intelligence communities as well as outside experts.
Only exhaustive on-site inspections can fully resolve this issue. One interesting sidelight of this controversy is that experts have debated whether some of the so-called Hard and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs) available to potential US adversaries (numbering many thousands) could be destroyed even by the most available nuclear weapons in the US inventory.
About the Authors: Stephen Cimbala and Lawrence Korb
Stephen J. Cimbala is a distinguished professor of political science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous books and articles on international security studies, defense policy, nuclear weapons and arms control, intelligence, and other fields. He is a graduate of Penn State, having received his B.A. in Journalism in 1965. He received an MA in 1967, and his PhD in 1969, both in Political Science, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He serves on the editorial boards of various professional journals, has consulted for a number of U.S. government agencies and defense contractors, and is frequently quoted in the media on national security topics.
Dr. Lawrence J. Korb, a retired Navy captain, has held national security positions at several think tanks and served in the Pentagon in the Reagan administration. He was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and served as assistant secretary of defense from 1981 through 1985. Follow him on X: @LarryKorb.
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