On June 13, Israel launched a series of strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, causing Iran to respond with a barrage of missile attacks on Israeli soil. A 12-day conflict between the two countries, which included American involvement, proceeded until a ceasefire entered into effect on June 25. The Dartmouth sat down with government professor Jeffrey Friedman, who specializes in foreign policy decision making, to discuss the Iranian nuclear program, the recent Israeli and American strikes and possible future developments.
How concerned should Americans be about an Iranian nuclear threat?
JF: I would say it’s relatively unlikely that Iran would directly attack the United States with nuclear weapons, but states that possess nuclear weapons tend to be harder to handle in international politics. Often, states don’t use nuclear weapons as a sword, but rather as a shield, in order to prevent other countries from retaliating against their aggression. Iran, for example, has been fairly aggressive in recent decades in sponsoring terrorism in the Middle East. I think those will rarely pose a direct threat to the United States homeland in any way, but they clearly matter for U.S. interests. To the extent that the United States wishes to contain Iran’s malign behavior in the Middle East, an Iran that possessed nuclear weapons would be much more problematic.
We’ve seen the Iranian situation evolve considerably in the last 10 years, particularly with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, which limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and President Donald Trump’s reversal of it. Would you say that the threat overall has increased or decreased since 2015?
JF: I think it’s pretty clear that the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons has gone up over the last decade. There were many reasons to question the JCPOA, but it is pretty clear that at least in the short term, Iran was abiding by the terms of that agreement. That agreement had set up extremely detailed inspections of Iranian facilities and had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium well below the threshold it’s at now. After President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, Iran made substantial progress on its nuclear program.
What would you say were the main motivations behind Israel’s strikes on Iran? And do you believe that Israel has ultimately achieved their goals?
JF: It’s pretty clear that the Israeli administration perceives an Iran that possesses nuclear weapons as an existential threat. Iran is a state that has explicitly pledged itself to the destruction of Israel, and Israel is quite close to Iran. The proximate cause of the Israeli strike was that the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a ruling saying that Iran was violating the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And in response to that, Iran announced it was opening a new enrichment facility. I think it is very clear why Israel would feel there was some pressure to act. This didn’t come out of nowhere. This has been building for a long time.
How would you evaluate the success of the U.S. strikes on Natanz and Fordow, two of Iran’s nuclear facilities?
JF: We don’t know exactly what damage was caused by the strikes yet. Some credible sources, including some U.S. intelligence sources, say the strikes only set back Iran’s capability by a few months. Even if Iran could theoretically rebuild its program in a few months, doing that would plausibly expose it to an additional round of strikes from Israel or the United States. So I think the question moving forward is, less, how long would it take Iran to rebuild its damaged facilities, and more, to what extent does Iran believe that attempting to reconstitute the program would simply expose it to further attacks?
What would you say is the probability in the short to medium term of a direct U.S. military intervention in Iran akin to what we saw in Iraq?
JF: I think it would be very hard to imagine the United States putting troops on the ground in Iran, especially for anything beyond a short-term Special Forces raid that might be designed to augment strikes on nuclear facilities. President Trump has been very clear that he has no interest in protracted wars of regime change in the Middle East, and indeed, a large portion of his political base is established on his opposition to George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s attempts to do that.
How do you see the situation evolving? What do you see as the most likely outcome?
JF: Right now, it looks like Israel is attempting to establish a form of military hegemony in the region that’s based on its ability to directly attack any actor that it believes threatens them. And since Oct. 7, Israel has substantially damaged many of its adversaries. Hezbollah has been substantially weakened, Hamas has been substantially weakened and now Iran has been substantially weakened. So I think Israel’s theory is that if it can maintain its intelligence penetration of its adversaries, it can maintain a credible threat to attack any actor which threatens it.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
