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New York Times Analysis: Three Unknowns Behind the US Attack on Iran

2025-06-22 23:21:25Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA NICHOLAS KRISTOF
Protest in front of the White House against war with Iran

By Nicholas Kristof - New York Times

President Trump has claimed to have achieved a “tremendous military success” by destroying three sites in Iran; we’ll see if that’s true. What is clear is that he has plunged America into a war with Iran that he himself admits could escalate.

Beyond doubts about the legal basis for bombing Iran, I see risks for America and the world related to three fundamental unknowns.

The first uncertainty concerns how Iran will respond to the United States. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has previously warned that, "The damage that the United States will suffer will definitely be irreparable if it becomes militarily involved in this conflict."

Iran has many options at its disposal, including attacks on US bases in Iraq, Bahrain and other regions. It could also launch cyberattacks, target US embassies or support terrorist attacks.

Another option would be to try to close the Strait of Hormuz, partially or completely, through attacks on ships or the laying of naval mines. This would be a blow to the global economy, as a quarter of the world's oil passes through the strait.

Experts have told me that the US could eventually reopen the strait, but at economic and other costs. When Iran mined the strait in 1988, a mine severely damaged a US Navy frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts.

When the US killed Iranian General Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Iran responded with a barrage of missiles at US bases in Iraq. A Ukrainian passenger plane was accidentally shot down, killing all 176 people on board.

I suspect that this time Iran may want to retaliate even more harshly, partly to restore the deterrent effect, but its capacity to do so may be more limited. For example, the Israeli attacks may have damaged Iran's ability to mine the strait, and such an action would also stop Iranian oil exports to China, thus angering Beijing.

But it's worth remembering what former Defense Secretary James Mattis once said: "No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, but in fact, it's the enemy who decides."

The second uncertainty is whether the Israeli and American attacks have ended Iran's nuclear program, or perhaps accelerated it. That depends, in part, on the success of the bombings at Fordow and elsewhere, something that will take time to understand.

It was previously uncertain whether even 13,000-kilogram American bombs would be enough to destroy the facility in Fordo, which is located deep in a rocky mountain.

We also don’t know whether Iran has built other centrifuge centers in unknown locations. There is broad consensus that a nuclear-armed Iran would be catastrophic and would encourage other countries in the region to build their own nuclear programs. But Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, publicly stated this spring that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. She downplayed the threat.

The risk is that Israeli and American attacks will push Iran to think that it really needs nuclear weapons now. Because if it had them, Israel would be less likely to bomb it.

According to experts, Iran has already enriched enough material for up to ten nuclear weapons. This material is believed to have been located in the city of Isfahan. Trump said the US had struck Isfahan, but it is not clear whether the facility was destroyed.

The third and most important question is this: Is this the end of the conflict or its beginning?

Optimists like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seem to believe that he and the United States can stop both Iran’s nuclear program and the Iranian regime itself. But on the other hand, Netanyahu was an ardent supporter of the Iraq war and thought it would bring change to Iran as well. In fact, Iran benefited from the Iraq war.

Even if the uranium enrichment capacity is eliminated, the expertise to do so may not disappear. So if the regime remains in power, this may simply be a temporary setback rather than the end of the nuclear program.

As for the idea that the bombings will topple the regime, there are few signs to support that. Iranian opposition figures, such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, condemned the bombing last week and called on Trump to stop it, not become part of it.

From my travels in Iran, I have seen how unpopular the regime is. Iran, at a popular level, has always seemed to me one of the most pro-American countries in the region, precisely because the government is despised for its corruption, hypocrisy, and economic incompetence.

This pro-American sentiment seemed like a good sign for the future, after the death of the supreme leader. But a pro-American government becomes less likely if we wage war against Iran. In fact, regime change may take the form of a hardline coup rather than a democratic transition. Once again, the range of possibilities is wide, and some of them quite worrying.

“While we all agree that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, Trump abandoned diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal and chose instead to risk American lives, further threaten our armed forces in the region, and drag us into another protracted conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There was still time for diplomacy to work,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, outlining the dangers of Trump’s decision.

That seems accurate to me. Trump's speech was triumphant, but it's too early to celebrate and there are still many uncertainties ahead.

* Nicholas Kristof is an American journalist and author, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. He joined The New York Times in 1984, where he was bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo, and has been a columnist since 2001. He has won awards for his reporting on the Tiananmen Square massacre, the genocide in Darfur and for a documentary on Covid-19

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