Letters from an American - June 22, 2025

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

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June 22nd, 2025. Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned out to protest his administration, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, Fordow, Netanz, and Esfahan. He assured the American people that the strikes were a spectacular military success and that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, he said, must now make peace. For the first time in history, the

United States dropped its 30,000 pound massive ordnance penetrators, or MOPs, 12 of them on another country. It was a triumphant moment for the president, but as reporter James Fallows noted, the bombing of Iran would never seem as successful as it did when Trump could still say the nuclear sites were obliterated and Iran and its allies had not yet made a move. Today administration officials began to walk back Trump's boast. The Wall Street Journal reported that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain, said it was way too early to assess the amount of damage.

International Atomic Energy Chief Rafael Grossi said that no one, no one, neither us, nobody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged. Tonight, David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that there is evidence to suggest that Iran had moved both uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the strikes. In last night's speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel's side in its fight against Iran. Trump said, and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God, I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the

Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you. But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump's bombing of Iran, the isolationist America First wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don't want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC's This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly, we don't want to achieve regime change. On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America firsters behind

the attack on Iran by posting some version of, if you are upset that Trump took out Obama's nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA. This afternoon, Trump posted, 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? Mygah. On ABC's This Week, Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut, said, It's way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is. And of course, it's way too early to tell how this plays out, right?

I mean, we've seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Collins, who promised us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq War, it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially, and this is true of every one of these wars, in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, initially things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone, Muammar Gaddafi is gone,

the Afghan Taliban are gone. And then over time we start to learn what the cost is. 4,400 Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So, bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here. There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran's nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump's director of National Intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran's nuclear program since April, and when

Israel attacked Iran on June 12th, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman. After Trump announced the strikes, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, posted, �I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States. Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.

He added, we know for certain there is a diplomatic path to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The Obama agreement was working. And as late as a week ago, Iran was back at the table again, which makes this attack, with all its enormous risks, so reckless. On Friday, a reporter asked Trump, what intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community had said they have no evidence that they are at this point."

Trump answered, "'Well then my intelligence community is wrong.'" He added, "'Who in the intelligence community said that?' The reporter responded, "'Your Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.'" Trump answered, "'She's wrong. At the end of May, Courtney Kubbe, Carol E. Lee,

Gordon Lubold, Dan DeLuce, and Elise Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that Gabbard was considering turning the president's daily brief, or PDB, into a video that looked like a broadcast from the Fox News Channel to try to capture Trump's attention. At the time, he had taken only 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week.

In the same number of days, President Joe Biden took 90. One person with direct knowledge of the discussion said, "'The problem with Trump is that he doesn't read.'" On June 17th, Katie Bo-Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN noted that while U.S. intelligence says Iran was years away from developing a nuclear weapon, Israel has insisted Iran was on the brink of one. A week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Fox News Channel, the intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote this

afternoon that a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads. The Department of Homeland Security has warned that the ongoing Iran conflict is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States. It linked those threats to the anti-Semitism the Trump administration has used as justification for cracking down on civil liberties in the United States. One pattern is clear from yesterday's events, Trump's determination to act without check by the Constitution. Democrats as well as some Republicans are concerned about Trump's unilateral decision

to insert the United States into a war. The Constitution gives to Congress alone the power to declare war, but Congress has not actually done so since 1942, permitting significant power to flow to the President. In the 1973 War Powers Resolution, Congress limited the President's power as commander in chief to times when Congress has declared war, Congress has passed a law giving the president that power, or there is a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces. The same resolution also says, the president in every possible instance

shall consult with Congress before introducing United States armed forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances. If an emergency appears to require military action without congressional input, the president must brief the gang of eight,

both party leaders in each chamber of Congress and both party leaders of each chamber's intelligence committee within 48 hours. Democrats and some Republicans maintain that while no one wants Iran to have nuclear capabilities, the strikes on Iran were not an emergency and the president had no right to involve the US in a war unilaterally. Administration officials insistence that the attack was a one-shot deal is designed to undercut the idea that the U.S. is at war. Trump's call for regime change undermined their efforts.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat of Maryland, said in a statement, Trump said he would end wars. Now he has dragged America into one. His actions are a clear violation of our Constitution, ignoring the requirement that only the Congress has the authority to declare war. While we all agree that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, Trump abandoned diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal and instead chose to unnecessarily

endanger American lives, further threaten our armed forces in the region, and risk pulling America into another long conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There was more time for diplomacy to work. The war in Iraq was also started under false pretenses. It's clear that President Trump has been outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who opposed the JCPOA negotiated by President Obama and has long favored drawing America into a war against Iran. The United States has rightly supported Israel's defense, but it should not have joined Netanyahu in waging this war of choice.

Instead of living up to his claim that he'd bring all wars to an end, Trump is, yet again, betraying Americans by embroiling the United States directly in this conflict. Representative Sean Caston, a Democrat of Illinois, posted on social media, This is not about the merits of Iran's nuclear program. No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. without the approval of Congress. This is an unambiguous, impeachable offense.

I'm not saying we have the votes to impeach," he added. I'm saying that you do not do this without congressional approval. And if Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, doesn't grow a spine and learn to be a real boy tomorrow, we have a BF-ing problem that puts our very republic at risk. But Representative Ronny Jackson, a Republican of Texas, told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel that Trump did not have to notify Congress because we do not have trustworthy people in Congress, especially on the left side of the aisle.

If you give information to Democrats and those Republicans who oppose the president, he said, you might as well put the Ayatollah on the phone as well. There is no basis for this statement. In a quirk of timing, the satirical media outlet The Onion took out a full page ad in the New York Times today that looks like a newspaper with the headline, Congress, now more than ever, our nation needs your cowardice.

Journalist Marissa Cabas of the Hand Basket got an exclusive look at the insert and reproduced its front page. It read, in part, Our Republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our founding fathers, in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero actions as this precious inheritance was stripped away. And that is where we have finally arrived. Congress members will have a copy of the ad in their mailboxes tomorrow when they get back to work on the Republicans' enormously unpopular budget reconciliation bill. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson.

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.