Donald Trump spent much of the second half of last year boasting about the total and utter success of his military strikes on Iran. “As you know,” he said in August, “we took out the nuclear capability of Iran, and to use the term that people try to dispute without any knowledge, it was obliterated.” Iran’s nuclear program, he assured the world, had been set back by “decades.”
Yet yesterday, just six months on, there he was again – meeting Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu once more to discuss the urgent need to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. In the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer – that quick and spectacular bombing mission on three Iranian nuclear sites on June 22 – the White House and the Department of Defense (or War) went to great lengths to cover up a leaked Pentagon analysis which suggested the attack had not, in fact, destroyed Iran’s nuclear program.
That was a low-level initial assessment, said Hegseth, as he made out that questioning the efficacy of the operation was somehow unpatriotic. The report, he insisted, was “leaked because someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn’t successful.”
But Trump and Hegseth protested too much. The belligerent repetition of their “total obliteration” mantra revealed a nervousness. And by now it ought to be clear that the leaked report was not so far off the mark. Why else would the US military have positioned a significant naval force in the Arabian Sea, poised to strike, in order to pressure the regime in Tehran into ditching its nuclear ambitions?
Last month, we were led to believe that Donald Trump was about to intervene against Iran to stop the suppression of anti-regime protestors across the country and perhaps help finally topple Ayatollah Khamenei’s beleaguered theocracy.
Inveterate war enthusiast Senator Lindsey Graham is still banging that drum, telling “the brave protestors of Iran” this week that President Trump, a loving god, “has always heard your cries and your demands for justice” and that his “statement that help is on the way is becoming more real by the day.”
But the Trump administration understands that warfare on supposedly humanitarian grounds doesn’t play well with the public, so the casus belli is switching back to the nuclear issue. “If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people,” says Vice President J.D. Vance. “What we’re focused on right now is the fact that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Of course, Trump will never concede that Operation Midnight Hammer was anything other than an unqualified success. Following his curiously low-profile talk with Netanyahu at the White House yesterday, the President said he “insisted that negotiations with Iran continue whether or not a deal can be consummated.” Consummated is a strange word to use, isn’t it?
Trump will never concede that Operation Midnight Hammer was anything other than an unqualified success
“If it can,” Trump continued, “I will let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference. If it cannot, we will just have to see what the outcome will be. Last time Iran decided they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer – that did not work out well for them.”
Trump appears to be pursuing peace, in other words, while Israel puts pressure on him for more war. Or is this all a strange diplomatic dance for Trump and Netanyahu to justify another military operation?
America and Israel know that Iran, while apparently willing to make some concessions on its nuclear ambitions, is very unlikely to acquiesce to all their demands. But surely one of the reasons Trump doesn’t want another strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities is that, by carrying out the attack, his administration will be tacitly admitting that the Hammer didn’t work last time.
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