Their Iran Narrative Is Unraveling

We can’t trust anything the administration is saying or doing on Iran.

JD Vance on Meet the Press Sunday morning

On Saturday night East Coast time, the White House, without first obtaining authorization or even consulting with any Democrats in Congress, committed an act of war against Iran by dropping bunker buster bombs and firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at three of its nuclear facilities.

It was a serious escalation that ended all ongoing diplomatic efforts, and it marked the entry of the U.S. into Israel’s war with Iran.

Yesterday morning, citing historian Timothy Snyder, I noted in a special edition of this newsletter five things to keep in mind as events unfolded. Many of those, unfortunately, are already coming to pass. Indeed, by Sunday afternoon, it was already apparent that the entire White House narrative around the war was in shambles.

Let’s discuss three reasons why.

“Totally Obliterated” or nah?

On Sunday I cited Snyder for an important first principle of war: “Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true.”

One of those things Trump proudly proclaimed in his speech to the nation Saturday night. He boasted, “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

But by Sunday morning, as I noted earlier, the Pentagon had walked that back, saying that while it believed the sites were “severely damaged,” it was “way too early” to assess the actual damage.

But what if the amount of damage to the Fordo bunker and other sites wasn’t what really mattered?

To build a nuclear weapon, a nation needs two things: 1) enough enriched uranium to make a weapon, and 2) a way to reliably deliver that payload and cause it to undergo a catastrophic nuclear reaction.

No one disputes that Iran nearly has the first part of this but doesn’t yet have the second. So let’s start with the first condition. Did we actually destroy the nuclear material Iran has been stockpiling?

Marco Rubio claims that we did. As the Times of Israel reported,

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US believes that a significant amount of Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium was located in the Isfahan facility when it was struck.

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubio says that, while “no one will know for sure for days,” he doubts that Iran’s uranium stockpile was relocated before the operation.

But there are reports, backed up by satellite imagery, that Iran successfully moved its nuclear stockpiles before the attack. As CNBC noted,

Maxar Technologies, a U.S. defense contractor, released satellite imagery on Sunday showing activity at Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility prior to U.S. air strikes.

The images of the secretive plant, which were collected on Thursday and Friday, depict truck and vehicle activity near the entrance of the underground military complex.

The trucks could have been moving stockpiled uranium, or they could have been moving centrifuges necessary to enrich more of it, or neither or both.

It’s likely both. As the New York Times reported, Israel officials with knowledge of the intelligence had evidence that Iran had recently moved uranium and equipment from the site. Specifically,

[T]here was growing evidence that the Iranians, attuned to Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to take military action, had removed 400 kilograms, or roughly 880 pounds, of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. That is just below the 90 percent that is usually used in nuclear weapons.

By contrast, there is nothing to support Rubio’s claim that the material was somehow all at Isfahan and destroyed as part of the attack. Indeed, keeping it all in one place would not have been prudent given the risks it could all be destroyed by missiles or bombs.

And if it had been destroyed, we would likely have seen a sharp increase in radiation levels around the sites hit. But according to a UN watchdog, “Following attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran… the IAEA can confirm that no increase in off-site radiation levels has been reported as of this time.”

If it was moved rather than destroyed, as intelligence experts generally believe, the nuclear material could be anywhere in Iran by now given how few vehicles are needed to transport it. As the Times further reported, the director of the IAEA

said by text that the fuel had last been seen by his teams of United Nations inspectors about a week before Israel began its attacks on Iran. But he said on CNN that “Iran has made no secret that they have protected this material.”

Asked by text later in the day whether he meant that the fuel stockpile — which is stored in special casks small enough to fit in the trunks of about 10 cars — had been moved, he replied, “I do.”

This sets up a possible nightmare scenario where we will lose any means to actually inspect what is going on with the nuclear material, while Iran is panicked about what the U.S. will attack next. As Sen. Adam Schiff observed,

I think we have to anticipate Iran now kicks out any inspectors. It leaves the nonproliferation treaty. And if it wasn’t in a sprint for a bomb, it is now going to engage in a sprint for the bomb.

The relative quiet by Iran, which has yet to launch any kind of retaliatory strike, may feel calming to markets and to our vulnerable bases in the region. But it should surprise no one if Iran’s immediate response is to go underground with its existing material and race to produce a weapon or two as a deterrent against further hostile action—and a threat against the entire region.

UPDATE: Later on Monday, Iran fired misfiles at U.S. air bases in the region, but all appear to have intercepted. The Iranians apparently gave Qatar advance notice of the attack and virtually guaranteed there would be no casualties from it, leading many to conclude this was a performative move designed to demonstrate what a larger attack might achieve.

No regime change… or MIGA?

In yesterday’s piece, I cited Synder for the following proposition: “The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think.”

It turns out that “over time” means “overnight” with this White House.

On Sunday, White House officials fanned out across the talk shows to insist that the strike on Iran was limited and the U.S. was not seeking “regime change” in Iran.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went before cameras to insist, “This mission was not and has not been about regime change.”

JD Vance went on Meet the Press to claim that the administration’s view “has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change.” And he wins the prize for best Orwellian-speak after claiming that we aren’t at war with Iran, but with Iran’s nuclear program.

Just a few hours later, Trump threw that out the window. He posted on Sunday afternoon that “if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

Paired with his earlier statement threatening that “if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets in Iran,” this view of “regime change” presents a problem for the America First crowd, such as Steve Bannon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-GA), and Tucker Carlson. MAGA influencers generally have been trying to avoid painful cognitive dissonance by insisting this isn’t really a war but a way to prevent a war. That is hard to square with a policy of “regime change,” which would require a protracted conflict.

It’s also clear that the White House’s aims are entirely muddled, rendering any diplomatic efforts rather pointless. As Jonathan Last of The Bulwark noted,

What is the “peace” that Trump is demanding from Iran? Iran is not currently engaged in state-level hostilities against America, so it can’t be the case that he wants the Iranians to stop shooting at us—because they aren’t.

Last further noted that, according to Trump, the Iranians no longer have a nuclear program to give up. It’s been “completely and totally obliterated” by our bombs and missiles. He writes,

So what are Trump’s conditions for “peace,” then? What new “targets” is he contemplating? Is the U.S. aim regime change? Or not? Or is the administration agnostic on whether or not the Iranian regime remains?

In war, you do not walk into a room unless you know how to walk out of it.

As I wrote on Sunday, citing Snyder, “Wars are easy to start and hard to stop.” And they are really hard to stop if we don’t know why we’re fighting one to begin with.

Going with instinct over intelligence

Third, and as many have noted, our own intelligence agencies had found that Iran was not close to making an actual nuclear weapon. Tulsi Gabbard testified to that in March.

Democratic leaders, such as Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), who is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and is privy to intelligence briefings, confirmed this assessment in an interview with Jim Acosta.

Yet the White House ignored our own intelligence and now insists based on “instinct” that Iran was near to making a nuke. Here’s JD Vance making that remarkable claim:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on Face the Nation that the fact that Iran “could” make one was enough to justify the attack.

As I discussed above, the fact that Iran has enough or nearly enough fissionable material to make a nuclear weapon is only half the equation. There are peaceful uses of nuclear material that are permitted under the non-proliferation treaty. For them to be in breach, Iran would have to be actively attempting to weaponize it into a useable warhead or bomb, and everything we know says that there was no evidence of this.

Judd Legum of Popular Info laid out how the manipulation by the administration was unfolding. He noted that Vance had “dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March” as evidenced by this exchange with NBC’s Kristen Welker:

Welker: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed, Mr. Vice President?

Vance: A couple things about that, Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.

But that’s not at all what Gabbard said, making Vance’s statement false and extremely misleading. As Legum notes, Gabbard had said that Iran had been enriching uranium, which has been true for years, and

that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.

There’s that clear distinction again. Merely stockpiling enriched uranium does not put you in violation of the non-proliferation treaty, nor does it mean you can make a weapon quickly. The process is much more difficult, and by all our own intelligence accounts, Iran had not set out on that path. Yet we attacked it anyway.

Rubio was getting it twisted, too, calling our own U.S. intelligence “irrelevant” to the decision to attack and getting into childish denials with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation:

Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?

Rubio: That's irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That's an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.

Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.

Rubio: No, it's not.

Brennan: Yes, it was.

Rubio: No, it's not.

[Narrator: It was in fact the key point of intelligence assessments.]

Fake WMDs redux

Watching these official lies bubble up in real time, I am reminded of the other time, over 20 years ago, that another Republican administration lied to the American public about Weapons of Mass Destruction. It used those lies to lead us into a disastrous and costly war in the Middle East under false pretenses.

We are all relieved to see that Iran did not immediately retaliate against Saturday night’s attack, at least for the moment. But the long term situation could actually grow more dangerous than ever, and a protracted war is still a distinct possibility, even if things go quiet for a time.

Why is that? Iran now knows not to trust in diplomacy. Any moderates in Tehran arguing for talks and negotiation have been forever discredited. Iran now understandably believes it can only hope to defend itself against a power like the U.S. by brandishing nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent.

So what will the U.S. do should it discover that Iran, in response to the attack, has now made the fateful decision to proceed to develop actual nuclear weapons? Will our bombers again attack to try and prevent this? Would we need to send in U.S. troops? How exactly would that work?

Will Iran’s allies such as China, which Iran supplies with some 90 percent of the oil it produces, decide to assist it in a nuclear program now, given U.S. aggression? After all, to balance out its other enemies’ moves, China lent a major hand to Pakistan to develop its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent to India. But with trade tensions still remaining high, does the White House really hold any cards with China?

Has the Trump White House actually thought any of this through?!

That was a rhetorical question, in case you’re wondering.