Why did the U.S. bomb Iran when it did?
Confronted with serious questions about the attack, a panicked Trump hid behind our troops, slandered reporters, and begged for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Donald Trump took an extraordinary victory tour last week, claiming to have saved the world from an Iranian nuclear weapon and bringing about a new era of peace. The facts tell a different story. A story of extraordinary egotism and abuse of power by Trump. Also, a story of successful Israeli espionage, diplomacy and military strategy.
Iran’s nuclear ambitions are not new. To counter them, back in 2015 Barack Obama negotiated something called JCPA to stop Iran from enriching uranium. The deal was never elevated to become a treaty because Republicans would not have passed it in the Senate. It’s not that they had a better idea. They just wanted to claim that Obama was making a bad deal. They were joined by Bibi Netanyahu, who has long sought to draw the US into military conflict with Iran.
The deal, according to experts at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, worked. Before it was signed Iran was 2-3 months from developing a bomb. It had 11,000 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 20 percent. After the deal, and as long as it was in place, Iran was never within a year of bomb making capability and had just 300 kg of uranium enriched up to 3.67 percent. Before the deal there was very limited cooperation with international inspection. During the deal there was unprecedented access.
Netanyahu was furious. Iran was building proxy armies all around Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis all received support and arms from Iran. Lebanon and Syria were destabilized and their hostility towards Israel encouraged. But without a nuclear threat, the west wouldn’t be eager to engage in another middle east war. Despite all the evidence and the reports from the international community, Netanyahu never stopped claiming Iran was close to getting a bomb.
And he found an ally in Donald Trump, who claimed Obama was a dupe and tore up the JPCA. Trump promised he would negotiate a better deal. He failed. After the U.S. withdrew from the deal, Iran’s path to a bomb closed to about a couple of weeks. By November of 2024, they had roughly 6,605 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent, and international inspectors had very limited access to verify any of it.
At the time Obama negotiated the JCPA he needed insurance. After all, the Iranian regime is all the things Bibi Netanyahu claimed it was- a sponsor of terrorism with dreams of an empire stretching from India to the Mediterranean. So, Obama ordered the defense department to come up with a way of stopping Iran from getting a bomb if it cheated on the deal. The result of that work was the strategy, the tactical planning, and the weaponry- that 30,000-pound bomb, to destroy Iran’s nuclear site, Fordow.
When Trump ordered the strike, he was greenlighting planning, intelligence, training and weaponry all developed by Obama. The men and women who did the work, who carried out the mission last week, did their jobs. They did them well.
But why was it necessary?
It’s true that Iran had grown closer to producing a nuclear weapon. But that progress ended before Trump ordered the attack.
After weakening Iranian proxies in the long war since the Hamas attack on October 7th, the balance of power in the Mideast shifted, and Israel found itself far stronger than Iran. After Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel, a big escalation in this war, Israel and the US shot them down. Then Israel counter-attacked and destroyed Iranian air defenses. Iran was, for the first time, vulnerable. Israel decided to attack, not to promote regime change, but to take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities- the ones that grew after Trump, at Netanyahu’s urging, abandoned the JCPA.
Israel was successful. On June 16th Bibi Netanyahu told the world that Israel had set back Iran’s nuclear program, “a very, very long time.” We have no reason to doubt the veracity of that claim. Israeli intelligence had penetrated the regime at all levels. In just days, Israel had killed the scientists leading the nuclear bomb making effort. They had degraded the centrifuges everywhere but the underground facility at Fordow, and maybe even there, through sabotage.
And that brings us to Trump’s decision. Israel announced the Iranian nuclear program was set back a “very, very long time on June 16. Trump order our attack six days later on June 22.
Why did we attack when we did, six days after Israel’s efforts had accomplished the mission? Trump was briefed by American intelligence officials that Iran was not making a bomb, and Israel had already successfully set back any bomb making program. So why attack when we did?
If the President had consulted Congress, he would have had to explain his reasons, and subject them to questioning. But empowered the other branches of government as no president ever has been, he skipped that step. So, we have to look at the evidence and make our own judgment.
It should be unthinkable that a president would launch an attack like that for any reason other than to achieve a military objective. But we know that objective was met before we attacked. Trump knew that too. How else could he announce to the world that Iran’s bomb making program was obliterated even before the bomb damage assessment had begun?
Iran’s Fordow fuel enrichment facility near Qom, Iran, June 2025. Photo credit: Maxar Technologies/ Reuters
We must now confront the fact the President Trump had other motives.
Was he unable to sit by as Israel eliminated the nuclear threat without him? Did his flagging poll numbers called out for a bold move? Did he desperately want to change the subject from his domestic war- the one where he sent the Marines to pacify Los Angeles, only to be shut out by the Dodgers? Did he hope, finally, to be able to hide behind our brave troops despite calling them suckers and losers?
Or was it that he wanted to go into the last weeks of negotiating the Reconciliation bill looking like a conquering hero?
Maybe it was all of that. The one thing it was not was bold stroke to eliminate Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon.
Launching an unprecedented bombing attack, using our most fearsome weapons, on a country we are not at war with, a country we are in the middle of negotiating with, draws a higher level of scrutiny than Trump is used to getting. This time most Americans didn’t just buy the taking points. This time reporters- even on FOX asked questions. They refused to be bullied. They demanded facts.
Trump’s errors in judgment, encouraged by Netanyahu, opened the door to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Israel successfully set those ambitions back in a wave of attacks. Six days after the Israelis declared success, Trump ordered the U.S. to attack. Confronted with these facts, a panicked Trump hid behind our troops, slandered reporters, and begged for the Nobel Peace Prize.