Letters from an American - June 23, 2025

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

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June 23rd, 2025. In a timeline of Trump's decision to drop 12 of the reportedly 20 massive ordinance penetrator bombs the U.S. military possessed on Iran, New York Times reporters confirmed what Josh Marshall of Talking Points memo judged from the beginning. Trump wanted in on the optics of what seemed to be Israel's successful strikes against Iran. Andrew Perez and Azoan Soob sang of Rolling Stone reported conversations with administration officials who confirmed there was no new intelligence to suggest Iran was on the

brink of producing nuclear weapons. Mark Mazzetti, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Eric Schmidt, and Helene Cooper reported yesterday in the New York Times that Trump had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against striking Iran but changed his mind after seeing how Israel's military action was playing on television. The reporters write, the president was closely monitoring Fox News, which was airing wall-to-wall praise

of Israel's military operation, and featuring guests urging Mr. Trump to get more involved. Trump began to hint he had been part of the operation and military advisors began to draw up plans for a strike. According to the reporters, by June 17th, three days after his military parade had fizzled and more than five million Americans had turned out to protest his administration, Trump had decided to bomb Iran. Rather than keeping the mission quiet, Trump issued increasingly aggressive social media posts appearing to hint at a strike. David E. Sanger of the New York Times cited reports from Israeli intelligence saying that Iranian officials had removed

400 kilograms, about 880 pounds, of enriched uranium from the Fordow enrichment plant to another nuclear complex, although at least some equipment and records would likely have remained there. Republicans have talked about bombing Iran to stop its nuclear aspirations since the early 2000s, but the relationship between the U.S. and Iran relating to nuclear technology actually reaches back to 1953. In that year, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, and the United Kingdom supported a coup against the elected Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammed

Mosaddegh, after he called for the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, in which British interests controlled a majority stake. In his place, the former leader of the country, Mohammed Reza Shah, retook power. In 1954, Iran accepted a 25-year agreement that gave Western oil companies 50 percent ownership of Iran's oil production. At the same time, President Eisenhower proposed trying to defang international fears of nuclear war by shifting nuclear technologies towards civilian uses,

including energy. On December 8th, 1953, he spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City on how atomic energy could be used for peaceful ends. The initiative, known as Atoms for Peace, provided reactors, nuclear fuel, and training for scientists for countries that promised they would use the technology only for peaceful civilian purposes. In 1967, the U.S. supplied a nuclear reactor and highly enriched uranium to Iran and trained

Iranian scientists in the United States. In 1974, according to Ariana Robary of the Brookings Institution, the Shah announced he intended to build 20 new reactors in the next 20 years. Then, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution in Iran forced out the Shah and put Islamic leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power. After the U.S. admitted the Shah into the country for cancer treatments, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy, taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The U.S. cut diplomatic ties with Iran, imposed sanctions, froze Iranian assets in the U.S.,

and ended the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran. Iran turned to Pakistan, China, and Russia to expand its nuclear program. Tensions between the US and Iran increased until Republican politicians talked about bombing the sites of Iran's nuclear program. Famously, Arizona Senator John McCain joked about bombing Iran in 2007 when he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, singing, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran, to the tune of the Beach Boys classic song, Barbara Anne.

McCain lost the 2008 election to Democratic President Barack Obama, and in 2013, at the beginning of his second term, Obama began high-level talks to cap Iran's enrichment of uranium that could be used for weapons. In 2015, 47 Republican senators, led by then-freshman Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, tried to blow up the talks, sending an open letter to Iranian officials to put them on notice that the next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen, and future congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

This was an astonishing breach of the longstanding U.S. tradition of presenting a united front in foreign negotiations. Nonetheless, in 2015, the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, that limited Iran's enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. At about the same time, negotiators settled an unrelated case between the U.S. and Iran at The Hague involving the return of American prisoners to the U.S. and Iranian assets frozen in the U.S. to Iran. Since Iran was cut off from international finance systems at the time, the US returned some of those assets in 2016

as Swiss francs, euros, and other currencies. Donald Trump, who was then running for the presidency, insisted that the Obama administration had sent pallets of cash to Iran as part of a deal to free the prisoners. Iran was in big trouble, they had sanctions, they were dying, we took off the sanctions and made this horrible deal and now they're a power,

Trump told reporters. Then in 2016, voters put Trump in the White House. Although the nuclear deal appeared to be working, Trump left it in 2018, calling it a horrible one-sided deal that should have never ever been made. Without the U.S., the agreement broke down. Iran resumed its program for enriching uranium. A week and a half ago, on June 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched strikes against Iran.

And on June 21, Trump ordered strikes on three of Iran's nuclear sites, claiming that after 40 years of Iranian hostility, Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. In fact, the effect of the strikes is not at all clear, although Trump insisted yet again this afternoon that obliteration is an accurate term, bullseye. Trump strikes on Iran underscore how Republican leaders see governance. They seem to see the careful negotiations under Obama

and the international inspections that certified Iran's adherence to the JCPOA as signs of weakness, preferring simply to use American might to impose U.S. will. Trump has combined that dominance ideology with his enthusiasm for performances that play well on television. This afternoon, Iran responded to the U.S. strikes with its own missile strike on a U.S. military base in Qatar after warning of the upcoming attack to enable Qatar to intercept the missiles.

Trump posted on social media, Iran has officially responded to our obliteration of their nuclear facilities with a very weak response, which we expected and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired, 13 were knocked down, and one was set free because it was headed in a non-threatening direction. I am pleased to report that no Americans were harmed and hardly any damage was done. More importantly, they've gotten it all out of their system and there will hopefully be no further hate. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice which made it possible for no lives to be lost and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to peace and harmony in the region and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America. 10 minutes later, he posted, congratulations world, it's time for peace. Republican dominance politics began in the 1950s as a way to prevent the federal government from protecting black and brown civil rights. Since then, it has reinforced the idea of asserting power through violence, and it has

always reinforced the power of white men over women and racial and gender minorities. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Trump administration's request to allow it to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin, often to countries plagued by violence. The administration has claimed this power as part of its campaign to scare immigrants from coming to the U.S. by demonstrating that they could end up in a third country with no recourse. The court majority did not explain its reasoning.

The three liberal justices, Katanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented sharply. In earlier rulings, the court cleared the way for the government to treat as many as a million migrants as removable, who previously weren't. Legal analyst Steve Vladeck told Angelica Franjaniadiez and John Fritz of CNN, and today's ruling allows the government to remove those individuals and others to any country that will take them without providing any additional process beyond an initial removal hearing,

and without regard to the treatment they may face in those countries. 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.