The Daily - The U.S. Bombed Iran. Now What?

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In an address to the nation on Saturday night, President Trump confirmed that the U.S. military had carried out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It was a move that he had been threatening for days, and that previous U.S. presidents had avoided for decades.David E. Sanger, the White House and international security correspondent for The Times, discusses whether the strike actually ended Iran’s nuclear program — or if America just entered a new period of conflict in the Middle East.Guest: David E. Sanger, the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Shifting views and misdirection: How Mr. Trump decided to strike Iran.With a military strike his predecessors avoided, Mr. Trump took a huge gamble.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Netanz, and Esfahan. On Saturday night, in an address to the nation, President Trump confirmed that the U.S. military had carried out what he had been threatening to do. Tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. The United States had launched an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in a move that

U.S. presidents had avoided doing for decades. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Today, my colleague David Sanger, on whether the strike actually ended Iran's nuclear program or if America just entered a new period of protracted conflict in the Middle East. God bless the Middle East.

God bless Israel. And God bless America. Thank you very much. It's Monday, June 23rd. David, thank you so much for being with us. It has really been a whirlwind few days of news. It's felt like we've been in this will he or won't he period to see if whether President Trump is going to drop this enormous bomb on Iranian nuclear facilities, which has been seen as something that would massively escalate the US involvement

in this new Middle East conflict that started between Iran and Israel. And I have so many questions about what happens next and what this means. But first, I would just like it if you could walk us through what we know about the attack and how it unfolded. Well, Rachel, it has been a whirlwind and not just for the weekend, but since the Israeli attack on Iran began. You know, I've covered five American presidents who have dealt with the Iranian problem and every one of them Including Donald Trump in his first term We're trying to manage this diplomacy sabotage cyber attack. They were just buying time and This was the first weekend

When the United States or any power Decided that it was worth risking a war by actually attacking the country. And that became evident to us, I think, on Friday as the rumors circulated among our sources that the president was talking about having up to two weeks for Iran to respond, but that in fact, he didn't really plan to go use those two weeks, that he had decided for himself that Iran was no longer seriously negotiating and was just dragging this out, trying to buy some time. It sounds like it was almost a ruse that the president pulled off.

Oh, I think it was. On Friday afternoon, he met reporters as he was getting off of his helicopter in New Jersey. And he said, well, they've got some time, but you know, not much time. It's running out. I've you know, within two weeks, he's stuck with the line. Well, it turned out that at five o'clock that afternoon he had actually given the go order to the military for an operation that they had practiced in some form or another for 10 years. And then on Saturday morning, we were all watching flight tracker sites that showed

B-2 bombers leaving their base in Missouri, the one place in the continental United States where they're usually kept, and flying west toward Guam. In fact, the actual bombing fleet had moved in silence over the Mediterranean. They joined up with fighter jets that were there to protect it. And so they crossed into Iranian territory very early on Sunday morning. We don't think the Iranians even saw them or knew that they were there. And by about 2 20 or 2 30 in the morning, Iran time,

they were over three different targets. The primary target was a mountain called Fordow, where Iran was making its most advanced uranium products, enriched to a level that was just short of what you would use to make a nuclear bomb. And the bombers dropped a dozen of these massive ordnance penetrators into the Fordow Mountain. These are 30,000 pound conventional bombs, and they were designed for an operation like this. But no one really knew whether or not this was going to work, because the massive ordnance

penetrator had never been used in combat before. When the smoke cleared and we looked later on, we saw that they dropped multiple bombs in hopes of digging in deep and getting at the centrifuge hall, which is where Iran had put 3,000 of these remarkable machines that spin at supersonic speeds and separate out uranium. And the idea was to not only destroy the mountain redoubt that was protecting these, but actually to destroy the centrifuges themselves. So David, you've described an enormous strike using weapons that have never been tested before. What do we actually know about how effective this operation was in dismantling Iran's nuclear facilities?

Well, we don't know a whole lot right now. We know that the president declared that the sites had all been completely obliterated. But when we heard from Defense Secretary Hegseth and General Cain today, they were much more cautious and said that they had been severely damaged. And as we've been going through this today, looking at satellite photographs, trying to understand intelligence from the ground, talking to weapons inspectors who knew these facilities well. We've gotten a very mixed picture. We don't really know what happened inside Fordow.

We can see that the mountain was pierced in several places. We can see that some of the earth is giving way, but you can't see into the centrifuge hall, which is 300 feet underneath the tunnels that are at sort of the base level of the mountain. So it may be a long time, and maybe never, if you can't get into them, to understand just how big the damage was there. We know that the Natanz nuclear enrichment site,

which is Iran's older and in some ways larger one, is largely destroyed and probably was destroyed by the Israelis before the Americans even got there. And the biggest mystery of all is what happened in Isfahan, where they store the nuclear fuel. And we think much of that fuel may have been removed in the days before the American attack. I mean, clearly this was an unprecedented attack. What has been the response from the Iranians so far? Well, Rachel, I'd say the response has been far more mild than I would have expected. We have obviously heard denunciations from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which

is the Iranian military units that actually run their nuclear program, or at least the military side of it. But the fact of the matter is, I had expected by now you would hear harsher rhetoric and seen more missile attacks. Why would the Iranians be downplaying the amount of damage done? Well, they're probably wildly embarrassed about this. Why would the Iranians be downplaying the amount of damage done? Well, they're probably wildly embarrassed about this. Here was the national treasure of Iran, right?

The nuclear program was the symbol of its strength and its resistance to the United States. The caretakers of the nuclear program, both the mullahs and the military and the civilian president and administration had no higher responsibility than protecting this as the ultimate defense for the Iranian state. And here they have now lost that ability, at least for a while. And there's another possible explanation, Rachel, which is they could be downplaying it so that it doesn't force their hand into a massive response,

one that would put them on an escalation ladder with the United States. That's what President Trump warned them against in his speech on Saturday night. The warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression. But it was interesting to me to hear about Abbas Arachi, the foreign minister. The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns in the strongest terms the United States' brutal

military aggression against Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities. He said, my country has been under attack, under aggression. There are a variety of options available to us. Iran reserves all options to defend its security, interests, and people. And we have to respond based on our legitimate right of self-defense. And then, you know, he was pressed about

whether diplomacy was still open. He said, not the case right now, but that didn't sound like he was saying it would never be the case. What it sounded to me like was he wanted to cast the United States as the aggressor against Iran much as we have cast Russia as the aggressor against Ukraine. Which is so interesting because of course this latest conflagration started with an attack by Israel on Iran a few days ago.

And our colleague Jonathan Swan told us last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been preparing to strike Iran's nuclear sites for many months. And not only that, Netanyahu had also been lobbying President Trump to do what he did this past weekend because Israel needed the bombs the U.S. possessed, those bunker-busting bombs, to finish the job of taking out these nuclear sites. And all of what has transpired in the last couple days feels like it would be therefore a victory for Benjamin Netanyahu. What has his response been so far? Netanyahu is delighted.

He has been trying to get four presidents in a row to go do what Donald Trump did on early Sunday morning Iran time. It was Netanyahu who asked President Bush in the last months of his presidency to give him the bunker busters and the planes to carry them so that he could go do this. That was the end of the Bush administration. He wanted it again, even during Trump's first term, never got it. And now, at a moment of huge weakness for Iran, he starts a war, he's successful, President Trump sees an opportunity and wants a piece of the action, and he finally got from an American president what he wanted. President Trump, I thank you. The people of Israel thank you. The people of Israel thank you.

The forces of civilization thank you. And so it was no surprise when Netanyahu went out and gave an address to the Israeli people in the world. But in tonight's action against Iran's nuclear facilities, America has been truly unsurpassed. It has done what no other country on earth could do.

Saying that Donald Trump had been the only American president who had the courage to go out and change the status quo in a way that he thought would bring peace to the world by denying one of the world's most vicious regimes one of the world's worst weapons. President Trump and I often say, peace through strength. First comes strength, then comes peace. And tonight, President Trump and the United States acted with a lot of strength.

It feels really noteworthy that in just a matter of days, President Trump went from trying to distance himself from the attacks in Iran, not wanting to be seen as being in lockstep with Israel, to doing basically like a full 180 and executing this military maneuver that all other presidents before him in recent memory have avoided doing. So I'm wondering, what changed for Trump? Like what got him to agree to this? Well, first of all, Rachel, I don't think it should be a surprise because the conditions are so different than they were for the four previous presidents. The Iranians have lost

all of the allies they had who could respond to an American attack. So all of a sudden, President Trump had an opportunity to do this with far less risk than faced Bush or Obama or Trump in his first term or Joe Biden. I'm really curious what the response has been domestically to Trump's decision from both parties. Well, no surprise surprise those around the president and closest to him have been applauding him for courage and willingness to do what no other president would do. Mr. Vice President, thank you for joining us.

The big question is the United States now at war with Iran? No, we're not at war with Iran, John. We're at war with Iran? No, we're not at war with Iran, John. We're at war with Iran's nuclear program. And I think the president took decisive action to destroy that program last night. JD Vance said this isn't a war against Iran. It's a war against the Iranian nuclear program. And the president was the only one with the guts to take it out. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons program.

We took a major step forward for that national objective last night. But he's not the only one. I mean, if you listen to Lindsey Graham. I thought it was bold, quite frankly, brilliant, militarily, necessary, and most importantly, effective. So well done, Mr. President. Or even Mitch McConnell.

They were applauding the president. You know what I think should have happened here, you know, right up front is him coming to Congress and asking for authorization to do this. That's the constitutional approach to this. But it's no surprise that there are some in Congress, many Democrats. We haven't been briefed. They should have called us all back. And frankly, we should have debated instead of saying, oh, well, the president's got this under control. We're going to cede our constitutional authority.

And a good number of Republicans who say this is an act of war and therefore Congress needs to be able to go vote on it before you do it. The United States should not rush into war. We shouldn't be dragged into a war with Iran. And certainly the president doesn't have the authority to simply wage war against Iran without congressional action. So the administration is saying this is a discreet action. We are not at war. The Democrats and some Republicans are saying we are absolutely at war. Who is right here? Are we or are we not at war with Iran?

Rachel, it's just too early to know. If J.D. Vance is right, then this is a war against the Iranian nuclear program and not against Iran itself, then maybe it's one and done. But if this is the leading edge of a new and deeper conflict in the Middle East in which we have now inserted ourselves, it'll be a very different story. We'll be right back. David, I want to walk through a few possible scenarios about what could happen next. I just want to note that it's 4.30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. It's possible that we get more answers over the next few hours. But as of right now, what would it look like if Trump and his allies are actually correct that this was a discrete mission and our involvement

is over? Well, for them to be correct, then the Iranians would have to decide that they're not really going to respond to this militarily or with attacks on the US, physical attacks, cyber attacks, terrorism, but instead that they are simply going to argue in the court of international opinion, perhaps in courts of international law, certainly at the United Nations, which they tried on Sunday, that this was fundamentally an illegal, unprovoked attack. And it seems almost impossible to imagine that the Iranians would back down

at this moment. But remember what happened in the summer of 1988. The Iranians were deep in the Iran-Iraq war. The United States was backing Iraq. And the founder of the 1979 revolution, founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, reluctantly said, you know, he was going to accept a ceasefire and end the conflict. And he said, it's like drinking from a chalice of poison. He knew that the survival of the Islamic Republic at that moment depended on it.

And it's very possible that his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, may decide that the survival of the regime depends on not taking on the Americans right now. So in that scenario, if that were to happen, it would look like Trump accomplished his goals, right? And he did something that no president had dared to do before. He attacked Iran, made them give up their nuclear program

with no significant escalation that would draw the United States into a wider war. I'm just sort of wondering, given everything you laid out about how Iran is likely to view or argue about this, what is the likelihood that that actually happens? about this. What is the likelihood that that actually happens? Well, it might happen. It could well be that the Iranians have their hands full right now, that the Israelis have killed the top military leadership, the top nuclear leadership. Ayatollah Khamenei himself is in hiding, and we have some evidence that he's not communicating well with his own government because he fears that any electronic communications will be a guideway to an Israeli missile. And so it's conceivable that they get so paralyzed in fear right now that they can't respond. And this is what the Israelis are betting on, right?

That the Iranians simply don't have the bandwidth to take on Israel and the United States right now and recognize that they've got a diminishing number of effective missiles and that this just isn't the moment. So that's option one. What's option two? Option two is they go back to the old playbook. They start firing on American bases. We have 40,000 Americans spread around the Middle East.

Many of those bases are closer to Iran than Israel is. Many of them are within reach not only of the long range missiles that the Iranians have in short supply, but of short range missiles of which they've got plenty. That they could cut off shipping in the Persian Gulf, that they could interfere with ships around the Strait of Hormuz, that they could sponsor terror attacks, that they could do their best at going after American financial institutions, or hospitals, or one of the many weak chinks in the armor

in our cyber defenses, because it wouldn't be the first time for them as well. They could do all of the above. And then Rachel, there's a geopolitical development that could come out of this. The biggest single change that's happened really in world politics in the past couple of years, certainly during the Biden administration, was the coming together of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, all of whom are linked by a common sense that they are adversaries of the United States.

And so you've seen Iran and North Korea both help Russia with the Ukraine war, Iran with drones, North Korea with troops. We've seen China deepen their relationship with all three of these countries. And you could see more of that, but I'd add one caveat to that. You know, when the hot war began between Israel and Iran, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin were nowhere to be seen. They didn't really come to the aid of their great new friends, the Iranians. And Rachel, while I'm convinced that the raid this weekend did huge damage to the Iranian

program and maybe set them back years, we know one thing. We are uncertain of what happened to the stockpile of nine or 10 bombs worth of highly enriched uranium near bomb grade. What do you mean by that? Well, it was stored in Isfahan, right? That's the site that was hit by those submarine launched Tomahawk missiles. And yet the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, tells me that he believes the Iranians when they say that they picked up these stockpiles,

which his inspectors last saw around June 10th, and moved them out of Isfahan before the Americans struck. So what does that tell you? That tells you that the Iranians don't have an enrichment capability right now that might take this from near bomb grade to bomb grade, but it does tell you that the Iranians don't have an enrichment capability right now that might take this from near bomb grade to bomb grade, but it does tell you that the Iranians have the fuel and if they can figure out how to fashion it into a bomb or get it further enriched, making it a lot easier to produce a bomb, then we have a big problem all over again.

Can we just take a step back here? If I understand you correctly, it's quite possible that one of the options at the end of all of this is that we have only delayed Iran's nuclear program. We haven't even destroyed it. If that scenario happens, I just sort of wonder, did we actually need to get involved at all? Well, it's a really interesting question because the core of your question, Rachel, is this one. At the end of the day, if your goal is to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon or even desiring a nuclear weapon, do you do it more effectively by bombing them or by negotiating with them?

Now, I've covered this program, as we've said, for more years than I should admit. And the only effective freezing of the program I've seen was after the Obama administration got the 2015 agreement. But if President Trump and Bibi Netanyahu are right, and they have hit Iran at its weakest point, maybe this is the end of the great arc of the 1979 revolution. And maybe you will see a year from now or two years from now or three years from now, the government fall and regime change to take place, even though American officials say that's not their goal.

And if that's the case, you may have a more compliant Iran. But there's another alternative. And that alternative is that the lesson that the Iranians draw from this is that the Americans can't be trusted, that Israel was conducting a war that clearly went beyond just going after their nuclear program. And the only way the regime can survive and the only way the country can survive is by racing for a nuclear weapon. That maybe the North Koreans were on to something by not waiting.

And that what they need to do is take the program underground, throw out the inspectors, get rid of the nonproliferation treaty requirements, and do their best to take what's left and rebuild it into a bomb project. David, thank you so much. Thank you, Rachel. We're in for quite a ride. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Friday, Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old former Columbia student who became the face of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian demonstrators, returned home to New York after three months in detention.

Mr. Khalil, a Palestinian born in a Syrian refugee camp, vowed to immediately continue advocating for the people of Gaza. And a suicide bomber attacked a Greek Orthodox church service in Syria's capital on Sunday, killing at least 20 people and underscoring the new government's challenge to maintaining stability and preventing sectarian violence. The attacker appeared to have had ties to the Islamic State, the extremist group that once controlled large areas of Syria, the authorities said. It was the first known suicide bombing in the Capitol since December, when a rebel coalition ousted Sirius President Bashar al-Assad and took the power.

Today's episode was produced by Diana Wynn and Rochelle Banja. It was edited by Mark George and Mike Benoit, contains original music by Dan Powell, Sophia Landman and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.