Ten Big Questions the US Airstrikes on Iran Leave Unanswered

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1. Has the Iranian nuclear programme been destroyed?

President Trump announced that the Iranian nuclear programme had been “obliterated”. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that it had been “devastated”. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Just two days after America’s strikes, Israeli planes were pounding the Fordo nuclear site, buried under an Iranian mountain, suggesting that the devastation was not complete. The Iranians had several days of knowing that the US was considering using bunker busters, giving it time to move key personnel and possibly equipment.

2. Can Iran still make a bomb?

Iran has around 400 kilograms of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), the fuel it needs to make a nuclear bomb – although it would need to enrich it further to get it to the required level. It seems clear that neither Israel nor the United States knows where this fuel is. It’s worth noting that before the Israeli and US strikes the intelligence assessment coming out of Washington had Iran still needing a couple of years to make a bomb.

3. Is the objective regime change?

For Israel it seems clear that is now the objective: both Prime Minister Netanyahu and members of his cabinet have said that they want the downfall of the Islamic Republic. Donald Trump has toyed with this idea, posting “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and “Make Iran Great Again”. However, he is now rowing back from that, probably in the face of severe pushback from some of his MAGA allies who dislike Middle Eastern wars.

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Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding on the ‘escalating fears’ experienced by people across the region

Chris Doyle

4. Is there an ‘existential threat’ to Israel?

With the fall of the Assads in Syria, the Iranian regime may be the most barbaric in the region. Its repression of its own people and its baleful influence further afield (including supplying Russia with Shahed drones used to kill Ukrainians) means that it deserves none of our sympathy. But there is a logical flaw at the heart of Israeli rhetoric around Iran: Israel talks of an existential threat from an Iranian nuclear programme. That assumes two things: one, that Iran has nuclear weapons; two, that it would use them against another nuclear armed state (Israel has had them for over fifty years). If Israel had no nukes of its own, its actions against Iran would make sense from a self-defence perspective.  Given that it has the capacity to destroy Iran, is it the Islamic Republic which is responding to an existential threat, not Israel?

5. Is there now a ceasefire in place?

On social media overnight on 23 June, Donald Trump announced a ceasefire. At the same time, Israeli missiles continued to pound targets in Iran, few if any of which could be said to be connected to its nuclear programme. Announcing a “ceasefire” is not the same as a ceasefire: until both sides agree to terms on which they will stop fighting, there is no ceasefire, whatever Trump says. Israel might welcome a short pause in hostilities as it plans its next move, but it’s hard to imagine Netanyahu not wanting to press home his advantage at this stage.

6. What does this mean for Russia?

Russia’s Middle Eastern allies have had a rough time: the Assads fled to Moscow, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are all degraded to a significant extent, and Iran is now on the ropes. The wider lesson might be that having an alliance with Moscow isn’t the best bet. But with oil prices shooting up and attention diverted from Ukraine, this isn’t all bad news for President Putin. He can offer to mediate, looking statesmanlike, whilst continuing, largely unmolested, war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.

7. What does this mean for China?

China is the main buyer of Iranian oil, so it would face significant disruption to its supplies if Iran tried to block the Straits of Hormuz. As an ally of Iran, it does not relish its humiliation. But there are upsides: it gives the People’s Republic an opportunity to grandstand about American imperialism and it also further underlines the “might is right” school of international affairs. This makes it easier for China to aggressively target Taiwan.

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Martin Burns

8. What will the Gulf countries do?

With the exception of Qatar, most Gulf countries have a deeply mistrustful relationship with Iran, even though these relations are way better than they were a few years ago (note the Saudi-Iran deal brokered by China in 2023). None of the Gulf Arabs would want to have a nuclear-armed Iran and if this series of military actions succeeds in putting a stop to that, it will have been a great success. But if regime change occurs, Iran will likely descend into a protracted and chaotic civil war. This, for countries in the immediate vicinity, is a nightmare scenario.

9. What does this mean for wider nuclear proliferation?

Had Iran succeeded in getting its bomb, none of these things would be happening to it. North Korea is the proof of that, were any needed. The lesson from this, and from Ukraine’s experience of giving up a nuclear arsenal only to be invaded by a nuclear-armed state, is that if you can develop a nuclear bomb, you are safe. But if you take too long over it (Iran has been trying for decades) you are at great risk. We are in an age in which many countries are re-assessing their interest in nuclear weapons. Many will conclude that with Russia and the United States acting in increasingly arbitrary fashion, they also need these arsenals.

10. What does this mean for international law?

International law is dead. After a long illness, including an illegal war in Iraq, a bait-and-switch regime change in Libya, the annexation of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it passed away when the United States attacked a sovereign state that posed no serious threat to it simply because the US president wanted to be the centre of attention. Its passing is much lamented by its supporters. The degree to which international law binds the actions of great powers was always limited. Now it longer binds them at all. We are living in the age of chaos.