{"id":39751,"date":"2025-06-23T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=39751"},"modified":"2025-06-23T06:33:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T06:33:23","slug":"us-bombs-irans-nuclear-sites-what-led-to-trump-pulling-the-trigger-and-what-happens-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/us-bombs-irans-nuclear-sites-what-led-to-trump-pulling-the-trigger-and-what-happens-next\/","title":{"rendered":"US bombs Iran\u2019s nuclear sites: What led to Trump pulling the trigger \u2013 and what happens next?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Javed Ali<\/a>, University of Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the early hours of June 22, 2025, local time, the United States attacked three nuclear facilities<\/a> in Iran with \u201cbunker buster\u201d bombs and Tomahawk missiles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following more than a week of Israeli strikes<\/a> on various targets in Iran \u2013 which had prompted retaliatory strikes from Tehran<\/a> \u2013 the U.S. move marks a possible inflection point in the conflict. In initial comments on the strikes at the Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz facilities, President Donald Trump said that Iran\u2019s nuclear program had been \u201ccompletely and fully obliterated<\/a>.\u201d In response, Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. had \u201ccrossed a very big red line<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Conversation U.S. turned to Javed Ali, an expert on Middle East affairs<\/a> at the University of Michigan and a former senior official at the National Security Council during the first Trump administration, to talk through why Trump chose now to act and what the potential repercussions could be.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do we know about the nature and timing of US involvement?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

President Trump has been forcefully hinting for days days that such a strike could happen, while at the same time opening up a window of negotiation by suggesting as late as June 20 that he would make a decision \u201cwithin the next two weeks<\/a>.\u201d We know Trump can be very unpredictable, but he must have assessed that the current conditions presented an opportunity for U.S. action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump met with the National Security Council<\/a> twice in the days leading up to the strike. Typically at such meetings the president is presented with a menu of military options, which usually boil down to three: a narrow option, a middle ground and a \u201cif you really want to go big\u201d strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one he picked, I would argue, is somewhere between the narrow option and the middle ground one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cgo big\u201d options would have been an attack on nuclear sites and Iranian leadership \u2013 be that senior members of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard, or possibly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The more narrow approach would have been just one facility, likely to have been Fordo \u2013 a deeply fortified uranium enrichment site buried within a mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did occur was a strike there, but also at two other sites \u2013 Isfahan and Natanz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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