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THE DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES OF DONALD TRUMP’S STRIKES IN IRAN  
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Isaac Chotiner, James M. Acton
June 22, 2025
The New Yorker
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_ Interview with James M. Acton, the chair and co-director of the
Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. _

, Photograph by Carlos Barria / AFP / Getty

 

On Saturday, President Donald Trump
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States into Israel’s war against Iran. American planes and
submarines struck three sites
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Iran, including two nuclear enrichment facilities—at Natanz and
Fordow—and a complex near Isfahan that was believed to contain
stores of uranium. The Israeli government had been pushing for Trump
to strike, in part because the Fordow site was believed to be
reachable only with American aircraft and weaponry. Prior
to Israel’s attack on Iran
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which began a little more than a week ago, Trump had repeatedly stated
that he wanted to make a nuclear deal with Iran, despite, in his first
term, having pulled the U.S. out of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with
the country.

On Saturday night, in a televised address, Trump claimed that the
three sites were “completely and totally obliterated,” and said
that Iran must now “make peace,” warning of more attacks if they
did not. The actual extent of the damage is not yet known, nor is it
clear if and how Iran will retaliate. (Trump had announced on Thursday
that the decision on whether to strike would be made “within two
weeks” and that there remained a possibility of negotiation.)

Late on Saturday, I spoke by phone with James M. Acton, the chair and
co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace. During our conversation, which has been
edited for length and clarity, we discussed why even a successful
strike might do less damage to the Iranian nuclear program than the
Trump Administration hopes it will, whether the action could lead to a
larger conflict with Iran, and why Trump’s decision to pull out of
Obama’s nuclear deal wrecked the best chance to curtail Iran’s
nuclear program.

WHAT ARE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WHAT HAPPENED TONIGHT?

I’m kind of appalled, to be honest, as an American
citizen—appalled that the President would start military action
without congressional authorization. That’s my immediate reaction.
But, as a nuclear-policy analyst, I’m very worried that this is the
beginning of a prolonged conflict, not the end of one.

WHY IS THAT?

In a lot of the coverage I have been seeing, and in a lot of the
advocacy for what President Trump ended up doing tonight, there has
been the impression that this would be a one-and-done thing—the
President would authorize a strike, Fordow would be destroyed, the
Iranian nuclear program would be ended, and it would be a very quick,
completely decisive military intervention. There’s two reasons why I
think that’s wrong. The first one is immediate Iranian retaliation.
Iran has many short-range ballistic missiles that can reach American
bases and American assets in the region. Israel has not particularly
targeted that infrastructure. It’s been primarily focussed on
Iran’s longer-range missiles that can reach Israel. So I’m
expecting to see some pretty dramatic attempted retaliation by Iran,
and I think that puts enormous pressure on the President to respond
again. That is the first pathway to immediate escalation in the short
term.

In the slightly longer term, I believe it’s very likely that
Iran’s going to reconstitute its nuclear program. I think Iran is
likely to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.)
and thus kick out inspectors. The N.P.T. prohibits non-nuclear-weapon
states, such as Iran, from acquiring nuclear weapons, and requires
them to accept International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.)
safeguards, such as inspections, to verify that commitment. That puts
us in the position where an American President or Israel might start
striking Iran again and again.

I DON’T WANT TO SPECULATE ABOUT EXACTLY HOW SUCCESSFUL THESE STRIKES
WERE, BUT, IF THE STRIKES DID WHAT TRUMP HAS CLAIMED, HOW MUCH OF A
BLOW WOULD THAT BE TO THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM?

My answer may be a slightly unsatisfactory one, but it depends on how
much else is destroyed. There are two key things that worry me. The
issue is not just destroying fixed sites. Iran also had a bunch of
highly enriched uranium that was once believed to be stored in tunnels
underneath Isfahan. And the Iranians have claimed that they’ve
removed that material. And then, secondly, there’s a whole bunch of
components for building centrifuges that were being monitored when the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (J.C.P.O.A.) was enforced and are
now no longer being monitored.

THE J.C.P.O.A. IS THE 2015 NUCLEAR DEAL, WHICH WAS NEGOTIATED BY THE
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, AND WHICH EXCHANGED A LESSENING OF SANCTIONS ON
IRAN FOR NUCLEAR INSPECTIONS AND LIMITS ON ENRICHMENT, AND WHICH TRUMP
PULLED OUT OF IN 2018.

Exactly. If the highly enriched uranium and the centrifuge components
are small, that means that they’re portable. They can be moved
around the country; they can be hidden. So, if what the U.S. has done
is destroy the big sites that we know about, the enrichment
facilities, but hasn’t destroyed the highly enriched uranium and the
centrifuge components, I think Iran can probably reconstitute
relatively quickly, perhaps within one or two years. It’s very hard
to put an exact time on this. If the operations have managed to
destroy some of the highly enriched uranium, or all of the highly
enriched uranium, and the centrifuge components, then the
reconstitution timeline is likely to be longer. What I would point out
is that under any scenario the reconstitution timeline is going to be
much shorter than the ten to fifteen years of the J.C.P.O.A. That’s
how long the deal was supposed to last for. It is also worth pointing
out that people argue that the J.C.P.O.A. was a bad deal because
it _only_ lasted that long. Even that was a bit misleading.

WHY?

Because some parts of the J.C.P.O.A. lasted twenty years, some lasted
twenty-five years, some actually were indefinite. It was actually
quite a complicated arrangement, the way the J.C.P.O.A. phased out
over time. Limits on enrichment and uranium-stockpile sizes lasted ten
or fifteen years. The I.A.E.A.’s right to monitor centrifuge
components lasted twenty years. The prohibition against weaponization
activities had no time limits. But, even under the ten to fifteen
years that was often quoted, we’re now likely dealing with a
reconstitution timeline under any scenario that’s substantially
shorter than that.

A CENTRAL POINT YOU HAVE MADE, WHICH I HAVE SEEN YOU MAKE IN THE PAST,
IS THAT THE ALTERNATIVE TO THIS STRIKE AND THE ISRAELI ACTION WAS NOT
NOTHING BUT WAS IN FACT THE DEAL THAT TRUMP EXITED IN 2018. WAS THAT
DEAL SUCCEEDING?

I think the J.C.P.O.A. was working very well. The U.S. intelligence
community assessed that Iran was complying with the deal. Iran’s
program was heavily limited, and it was heavily inspected. To my mind,
it was working very well when Trump pulled out. And I do think there
was a slim but real opportunity for diplomacy over the past few days.
Obviously, there was no possibility of reconstituting the J.C.P.O.A.
But you had this interesting situation where Israel had started an
attack; it couldn’t destroy everything in Iran, including but not
limited to Fordow, and the American threats gave Trump some leverage.
And Trump at times appeared interested in trying to use that leverage
to negotiate. I do feel there was some kind of window for diplomacy
there. I’m just very sad that that window was never taken, and there
wasn’t a good-faith attempt to try and take advantage of it.

THE LACK OF GOOD FAITH WAS FROM TRUMP, OR FROM THE IRANIANS, TOO?

We don’t know. But what I would point out is that a serious
negotiation can’t be done in forty-eight hours or however long it
was since Trump announced that he was going to give the opportunity
for diplomacy. He said this week that he would make a decision
within two weeks
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So my feeling is that there was never any real attempt on the part of
the U.S. to follow up on that and actually try to negotiate some kind
of diplomatic settlement here.

 

DO YOU THINK ANY NEGOTIATED DEAL WOULD HAVE BEEN SIMILAR TO THE
J.C.P.O.A.? OR DO YOU THINK THAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WANTED TO
NEGOTIATE A DIFFERENT DEAL, GIVEN THAT TRUMP CLAIMED THE OBAMA DEAL
WAS SUCH A DISASTER?

It is a tough question to answer, although we had some leaks about
negotiations earlier this year. Some of the ideas that were coming out
about that really were starting to sound a bit like some of the ideas
in the J.C.P.O.A. If I had been advising the Administration over what
to do, given the imminence of escalation, given the time urgency once
Israel had started to attack, I would have urged them to go for
something incredibly simple, something that could be negotiated very
quickly but that would give you a high degree of short-term
assurance—something like a cap on enrichment levels, which would
have been something that could easily be verified. It would be a very
clear signal that the Iranians wanted to de-escalate. It really would
reduce their proliferation potential, and then you would try and build
upon that in time. That’s the kind of diplomatic approach that over
the last few days I think would have been feasible. But the J.C.P.O.A.
was more than a hundred pages long. You could never negotiate even a
modified version of that in two weeks. But you could have done
something simple.

ONE POINT THAT OPPONENTS OF THE OBAMA DEAL HAVE MADE IS THAT IRAN
COULD HAVE BEEN USING HIDDEN SITES TO ENRICH URANIUM BEYOND WHAT WAS
ALLOWED. BUT YOU HAVE ARGUED THAT THAT ISN’T ACTUALLY A CASE FOR
MILITARY ACTION. WHY?

One of the big challenges with all I.A.E.A. inspections everywhere is,
Does the I.A.E.A. know where everything is? And there was always some
risk with the J.C.P.O.A. that Iran would have a secret facility or
more than one secret facility in which it might be violating the deal.
The existence of a secret facility in and of itself would be a
violation of its I.A.E.A. obligations, and the J.C.P.O.A. contained a
whole bunch of provisions designed to make it easier for inspectors to
try to locate a clandestine facility.

One of the big criticisms of the J.C.P.O.A. was that these provisions
were inadequate. But my argument is that there’s actually a bigger
problem with military action, because if Iran has secret facilities
that we don’t know about, then we can’t try to bomb and destroy
them. And the effect of bombing and destroying will probably harden
Iran’s resolve to make the political decision to build a nuclear
weapon, potentially using those clandestine facilities that we don’t
know about. Moreover, if Iran kicks out inspectors, as I think is
pretty likely now, then one of the key ways we had to try to find
clandestine facilities has evaporated. So, if you’re worried about
clandestine facilities, my view is that bombing actually has made the
problem worse than it would have been under a diplomatic arrangement.

YOU TALKED ABOUT THE “POLITICAL DECISION” TO MAKE A NUCLEAR
WEAPON. IRAN HAS SAID THAT ITS NUCLEAR PROGRAM IS PEACEFUL. BOTH THE
UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL UNDER DIFFERENT GOVERNMENTS HAVE SEEMED VERY
SKEPTICAL OF THAT. ARE YOU IMPLYING, WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT A POLITICAL
DECISION BEING MADE IN THE FUTURE, THAT THAT DECISION HASN’T BEEN
MADE?

I would distinguish between two things here. The first is Iran wanting
the ability to build a nuclear weapon on short notice, and the second
is Iran having made the political decision to actually go ahead and
build the bomb.

SO YOU ARE SAYING THAT YOU THINK THEY WANT THE FIRST ONE? IT’S NOT
SIMPLY A PEACEFUL NUCLEAR PROGRAM, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT THEY
WERE ON THE VERGE OF TAKING THE FINAL STEP?

I think they’ve always wanted the capability to build a bomb on
short notice. They’ve dialed up and down that program over the
years. To build a nuclear bomb, you really need to do two things.
Firstly, you need sufficient fissile material, meaning highly enriched
uranium or plutonium. And, secondly, you need to know how to turn that
material into an actual, usable, deliverable nuclear device. That is
called weaponization. And they stopped their weaponization activities,
according to U.S. intelligence, in 2003. That’s something the U.S.
has said publicly and repeatedly. Tulsi Gabbard said that in testimony
back in March. But I do believe that one of the reasons why they were
continuing with enrichment was to maintain this capability to build a
nuclear weapon on short notice. In that sense, even though they
stopped weaponization activities in 2003, I don’t think the Iranian
program has ever been purely peaceful.

Now, one of the things that Netanyahu came out and implied in
justifying the Israeli attack just over a week ago now was that Iran
had actually started to build a nuclear weapon. But we have had a lot
of intelligence leaks from the U.S. that disagree with that
conclusion. And part of my concern now is that if the U.S. was right,
if Iran hadn’t actually made the political decision to build a bomb,
these attacks are going to lead it to make that decision.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, THE I.A.E.A. FOUND THAT IRAN HAD FAILED TO COMPLY
WITH ITS NON-PROLIFERATION OBLIGATIONS. WHAT WAS THAT I.A.E.A.
DECISION ABOUT AND WHAT DID IT SUGGEST TO YOU?

The I.A.E.A. had found evidence of Iranian nuclear activities. It had
found traces of uranium at three different sites that had never been
declared to the I.A.E.A. And under the rules—under the I.A.E.A.’s
agreements with states—states are allowed to do more or less
anything short of actually assembling a nuclear weapon, but they have
to declare it to the I.A.E.A., and they have to allow it to be
inspected. Iran never really explained what had gone on at those
sites. It was obfuscating the activities of inspectors. It was
probably lying to them. You know, as I’ve tried to make clear
throughout this interview, I don’t think the Iranian program was
peaceful. The question for me was: Is military action the best way of
actually stopping it from getting the bomb?

WHEN DID THESE VIOLATIONS HAPPEN?

The undeclared activities all predated the J.C.P.O.A. In fact, they
appear to have ended by around 2003, when Iran is believed to have
stopped its weaponization program. And material and equipment was
stored at a site that Iran tried to sanitize in 2018, after Trump
pulled out of the deal. But the I.A.E.A. still detected nuclear
material. So the key activities both predate and postdate the
J.C.P.O.A., although Iran was technically in non-compliance the entire
time for failing to declare the materials.

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF SPECULATION THAT WHAT THE ISRAELIS ARE HOPING
FOR IN THE MEDIUM TERM OR JUST SHORT TERM IS REGIME CHANGE. THAT MAKES
A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF INTUITIVE SENSE, GIVEN YOUR ANSWERS TODAY, BECAUSE
WHAT YOU SEEM TO BE SAYING IS THAT YOU DON’T THINK THE ISRAELI
STRIKES OR THE AMERICAN STRIKES ARE AN EVEN MEDIUM-TERM SOLUTIONS TO
THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM.

I think that’s right. One of the things that surprised me about the
Israeli strikes was the extent to which they were going after
regime-related targets in a way that suggested their goals were
broader than merely destruction of the nuclear program. And Netanyahu
has openly said that he believes the death of the Supreme Leader would
end the war more rapidly. So I think the Israelis, or at least
Netanyahu, genuinely seem to hope that the strikes will precipitate
regime change. The question that I would have is: Why do we
necessarily think that a new regime would renounce the nuclear program
and would give up on a nuclear weapon? One possibility is the current
regime gets replaced by something that’s even harder-line, perhaps
some kind of military junta of some description. That kind of regime
seems pretty unlikely to give up the nuclear program. But even a more
pro-Western democratic regime, which I think is quite unlikely to
emerge, would not necessarily give up the program just because of how
wrapped up it is in Iranian self-image these days. So it’s just not
clear to me that even regime change would actually lead to what the
Israelis hope it would do on the nuclear front. ♦

_JAMES ACTON holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of
the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. A physicist by training, Acton is currently writing a book on
the nuclear escalation risks of advanced nonnuclear weapons and how to
mitigate them. His work on this subject includes the International
Security article “Escalation through Entanglement” and the
Carnegie report, Is It a Nuke?._

_An expert on hypersonic weapons and the author of the Carnegie
report, Silver Bullet?, Acton has testified on this subject to the
U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee and the
congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
Commission. He has also testified to the U.S. House of Representatives
Appropriations Committee on nuclear modernization. _

_Acton’s publications span the field of nuclear policy. They include
the Carnegie report, Reimagining Nuclear Arms Control (with TD
MacDonald and Pranay Vaddi), and two Adelphi books, Abolishing
Nuclear Weapons (with George Perkovich) and Deterrence During
Disarmament. With Mark Hibbs, he co-wrote Why Fukushima Was
Preventable, a groundbreaking study into the root causes of the
accident. _

_Acton is a member of the International Advisory Council for the
Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe. He has published
in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington
Post, Dædalus, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Science & Global
Security, and Survival. He has appeared on CNN’s State of the
Union, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and PBS NewsHour._

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* Donald Trump
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* Iran
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* nuclear weapons
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* bombing
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* war
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* diplomacy
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* Israel
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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