It is an established fact that most of the time US President Donald Trump conducts American foreign policy on his Truth Social social media platform.
A day after the US attacks on the three Iranian nuclear installations of Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on 21 June, he wrote that “it’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian regime is unable to Make Iran Great Again, why wouldn’t there be a regime change?”
On the same day, 22 June, US Vice-President J. D. Vance told the US network NBC that the view of the Trump administration “has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change” in Iran. He added that “we want to end their nuclear programme, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement.”
This raises the question of what kind of “long term settlement” the Americans want and what they hope to settle by it.
In 2003, former US president George W. Bush decided not to bomb Iranian nuclear installations after the Americans had gathered information on Iran’s nuclear programme. There were officials within the Bush White House who had proposed targeting these installations, but in the absence of verifiable intelligence that Iran had decided to obtain a nuclear weapon, the then US president had not favoured the bombing of Iran.
Fast forward to the period between 13 and 21 June this year. Those seven days saw an unprecedented strategic deception on the part of the US administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The former lured the Iranians into five rounds of negotiations mediated by the Omanis, who were themselves deceived as they had acted in good faith, in order to settle differences related to the country’s nuclear programme while at the same time planning with the latter a two-step plan to attack Iran.
The plan started with an Israeli bombing and assassination campaign taking out some of the top brass in the Iranian Army and Revolutionary Guards and destroying air defence systems and the launchers of long-range ballistic missiles. While American-made Israeli F-35s were bombing Iran, the White House was still talking about a sixth round of negotiations with the Iranians that was announced to take place in Muscat in Oman on 15 June.
The announcement was part of a grand strategic deception. On 22 June, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said in his first press briefing at the Pentagon since taking office six months ago that the military plan to attack Iran was three months old. This admission begs the question of who in future will trust the promises of the Trump administration, particularly when dealing with US policies in the Middle East. Only the most naïve among the Arab and Muslim countries would do so.
Flanked by Vance, Hegseth, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Trump addressed the American public on 21 June, saying that his country had “completely and totally obliterated” the key Iranian nuclear facilities of Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No 1 state sponsor of terror,” Trump said, warning Iran of further American attacks if “it does not seek peace.”
He concluded by saying “remember there are many targets left.”
On the same day, Trump wrote on his favourite social media platform, this time all in capitals, that “any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”
It is too early to assess the true impact of the US attacks on the Iranian nuclear sites. Trump believes that it was “monumental,” but others in the United States and Europe have wisely suggested that it will take some time before an accurate assessment of the extent of the damage can be ascertained.
Top Pentagon officials said that it was too soon to say whether Iran still retains some nuclear ability. Vance is on record as saying that Iran’s potential to build a weapon has been set back “substantially.” A senior American official acknowledged that the attacks on the Fordow site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but only “severely damaged it.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on 22 June that the “US attacks on our nuclear installations clearly showed that it [the US] was the main driver behind the Zionist regime’s hostile actions against the Islamic Republic.”
There have been divisions in the US, as expected, on the merits of going to war on the side of Israel against Iran. Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the American attack on Iran was “a massive gamble by President Trump, and nobody knows yet whether it will pay off.”
Senator Chris Murphy (Dem – Connecticut) wrote in an online post that “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon” after he was briefed on US government intelligence on Iran last week to the effect that “Iran poses no imminent threat of attack to the United States.”
The US columnist Robert Kagan wrote in the Atlantic magazine that “bombing alone will not achieve a verifiable and lasting end to Iran’s nuclear program,” adding that in celebrating the attacks on Iran, Trump “will be celebrating himself and his rule.”
The US is “well down the road to dictatorship at home,” he said, adding that this is the context in which war with Iran would occur.
It is worth quoting excerpts from Kagan’s article since it shows an ideological linkage between the Trump administration and the ruling Israeli Coalition, which is considered an anti-liberal and ethnoreligious force within Israeli society and politics.
“The United States is currently ruled by anti-liberal forces trying to overturn the Founders’ universalist liberal ideals and replace them with a White, Christian identity,” Kagan wrote. “Today the United States… is at risk of being turned into a military dictatorship. Its liberal-democratic institutions have all but crumbled… War with Iran is likely to hasten its demise.”
Among the supporters of the US attacks figured Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, who said that “this is America First policy in action.” Senator Chris Van Holler (Dem – Maryland) wrote that the US “has rightly supported Israel’s defence, but it shouldn’t have joined Netanyahu in waging this war of choice.”
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 June, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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