This period of 20 years is by no means the first time in U.S. history that military force, economic pressure, and diplomacy have been seen as alternatives to one another, as opposed to tools that must be applied simultaneously, to varying but carefully calibrated degrees, if a recalcitrant adversary is to be effectively constrained. The Trump administration must not repeat the mistake by now attaching too much significance to Saturday night’s stunning demonstration of American air supremacy.
For air power alone cannot suffice. One does not need to accept the cynical critique of Saturday night’s strikes by the former Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. There are valid reasons to doubt that Iran’s nuclear program has been crippled, as Professor Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute has argued. It is not clear what has become of Iran’s roughly 400 kilograms of percent-enriched uranium-235 which, if further enriched, would be enough for up to 10 nuclear weapons. Iranian trucks were on the move around Fordow before the U.S. strikes. So Iran may still have the ability to manufacture centrifuges and to resume enrichment.
It would be pleasing to imagine the amputation of Fordow setting back Iran’s nuclear program so far that it effectively restores the half-century-old non-proliferation regime. And it would not be entirely fantastical. After all, the use of force ultimately consigned the nuclear ambitions of the Iraqi and Libyan dictators to the trash can of history. With the benefit of hindsight, we can speculate that military action might also have thwarted the North Korean nuclear arms program.
"As Kissinger often said, every success in foreign policy is just an admission ticket to the next crisis," writes Niall Ferguson. https://t.co/FhWGMLTnot
— The Free Press (@TheFP) June 23, 2025