Seems like Trump announced a ceasefire before many Israeli and Iranian government officials knew about the talks or agreement. There was a period between the announcement of a ceasefire and the time it went into effect when Israel and Iran struck each other while they still could. The ceasefire appears to have been broken, but may be holding now.
Claims that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated sound like silly propagandistic lies by the Trump administration. The nuclear program was greatly damaged, but not obliterated, and Iran can rebuild. Depending on how fast Iran can rebuild, this may have ultimately been a futile attack that only makes Iran more determined to get a nuclear weapon.
“For years, hard-line voices inside the Islamic Republic have been calling for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against exactly this kind of overwhelming attack.
Even as Iran continues to insist its nuclear program is for strictly peaceful purposes, those calls will now inevitably have been bolstered and the nuclear hard-liners may finally get their way.
Ominously, Iranian officials are already publicly hinting at pulling out of a key treaty – the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT – designed to monitor and prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons.”
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“But if there is political will, nuclear enrichment facilities can eventually be repaired or rebuilt, while Iran’s technical know-how survives, despite the targeting by Israel of multiple Iranian nuclear scientists.
Meanwhile, officials at the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, say they are uncertain of the whereabouts of the nuclear material Iran has already manufactured, including the large amounts of uranium-235 enriched to 60%, which is very close to weapons-grade levels.
Iranian state media says the three nuclear sites struck by the United States – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – were “evacuated” beforehand, raising the possibility that some or all of that material is being stored elsewhere, possibly in a secret facility, unknown to nuclear inspectors.”
Much highly enriched uranium was likely removed before U.S. bombs hit. If the U.S. was going to attack anyways, striking earlier may have prevented this.
If the U.S. wanted the Israel-Iran war to end, one strategy to end it was to use U.S. bunker busters to destroy nuclear sites, helping Israel achieve their goals and end the war sooner. Time will tell whether this strategy worked.