US strikes against Iran raise more questions than answers

The United States bunker-busting air strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites raise more questions than answers, fuelling a war of narratives as the world waits for what comes next.

This weekend, President Donald J. Trump celebrated the strikes as “a spectacular military success” in televised remarks, even if it was unclear what that means and despite US intelligence and, by implication, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) assessments that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump said the targeted sites – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan – had been “completely and totally obliterated.”

Taking a more cautious attitude without contradicting Mr. Trump, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine said damage assessment showed the targeted sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction” but would not confirm that they had been “obliterated.”

Instead of listening to the US intelligence community and the international agency, Mr. Trump echoed Israeli claims that Iran was months, if not weeks, away from possessing nuclear weapons, raising the question about who the president listens to, the US intelligence community or Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump suggested that he shared Mr. Netanyahu’s desire for regime change, hours after his Vice President JD Vance and Secretaries of State and Defence Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, insisted that the US strikes targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, not the country’s regime.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Mr. Trump said on Truth Social, his social media platform.

Mr. Trump’s seeming embrace of regime change could shape how Iran responds to the US strikes.

While the administration declared that, at the very least, the strikes had significantly set back Iran’s nuclear programmes, Iranian officials asserted that the United States had failed to destroy Iran’s uranium stockpile, including some 410 kilogrammes enriched to 60 per cent purity.

The officials said authorities moved the uranium to safe locations in advance of the US strikes.

Major General Mohsen Rezaie