What Trump's War Didn't Solve

Tehran emerges with its nuclear material intact and new leverage over a global chokepoint, leaving the central risks unresolved.

A ceasefire is better than no ceasefire. That needs to be said first, and said clearly. The bombs are not falling (in Iran). Ships are moving. People who would otherwise die will live.

If you have spent any time in a conflict zone, you know that when the guns fall silent, and the roaring, screaming skies are returned to the breezes and birds, and the children’s voices are heard again in the streets—it’s stunning and precious. It’s everything.

But a ceasefire is not a peace.

And this one, if it holds, may have been purchased at an extraordinary strategic price.

If the central purpose of this war was to end, or decisively reduce, the threat posed by the Iranian regime, the hardest truths are the simplest ones: Iran still has the highly enriched uranium. And Iran has shown that it can turn the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important waterways on earth, into a bargaining chip the world cannot ignore.

The uranium.

Iran still possesses roughly 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity. That is not weapons-grade—weapons-grade is 90 percent—but it is a short technical sprint from it. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been monitoring Iran’s nuclear program for decades, and the IAEA’s own assessments suggest that the country’s stockpile is sufficient, if further enriched, for something in the range of eight to ten nuclear devices.

President Trump has said this material can now be “monitored effectively by satellite.” That claim deserves a lot of scrutiny.

I covered the months of negotiations in 2014 and 2015 leading up to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. One thing I learned about this subject: Only on-the-ground, round-the-clock, eyes-on, technologically monitored—and regular in-person inspections of Iran’s facilities—will actually work to stop the country’s nuclear ambitions, which date to the time of the Shah, half-a-century ago.

You cannot do any of that that from space.

Satellite surveillance can track trucks moving in and out of hardened tunnel complexes. It cannot measure the contents of those trucks. It cannot certify chain of custody. It cannot tell you whether material has been dispersed, hidden, or quietly moved to locations we don’t know about—and we have already lost what IAEA inspectors call “continuity of knowledge” about the full stockpile Iran has amassed.

The Obama deal was always better than its critics claimed. And though it was far from perfect—it did nothing about Tehran’s missile programs, some provisions expired after 10 and 15 years, and it had a cumbersome dispute-resolution process that Iran could exploit—it was arguably better than what we face now.

So now Iran will rush as soon and as fast as it can to nuclear breakout. The ayatollahs and Republican Guard know—as North Korea knew—that only a nuclear weapon will truly protect the regime from the US and its allies.

And there is an infuriating question that follows inescapably from Trump’s blithe reassurance:

If satellite monitoring is adequate to prevent Iran from misusing its enriched uranium, then why was it necessary to go to war in the first place?

The administration offered no answer to this question, because there is no comfortable one. Either the monitoring is sufficient—in which case the war was pointless—or it isn’t, in which case the ceasefire has left the most dangerous element of Iran’s nuclear program intact and in Iranian hands.

The highly-enriched uranium stockpile is the nuclear threat. Over time—not a long time—facilities can be rebuilt. Centrifuges can be replaced. And as long as Iran holds hundreds of kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium, it holds the core of nuclear breakout capability—not in years, but in weeks under worst-case assumptions. You can bomb the program. You cannot easily bomb the uranium away.

Trump knew this going in. Every serious analyst knew it. There were plans to put American boots on the ground to go get the uranium—that’s how important this issue is. The current outcome does not resolve it.

The Strait.

The second fact is this: Iran has announced that ships may now pass through the Strait of Hormuz “via coordination with Iran’s Armed Forces.”

Read that sentence again. Before this war, the Strait was an international waterway. Iran threatened it periodically, harassed tankers, used it as leverage. But it did not formally exercise control over passage. Now, in the aftermath of a war fought partly to reduce Iranian leverage over global energy flows, Tehran has asserted precisely the authority over the Strait it never formally held before. And it’ll make a ton of money off that control.

Way to go, guys.

Roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through those 21 miles of water. The Gulf states—our allies, the countries whose security we have guaranteed for decades—are watching this development with a fear that no amount of diplomatic language will fully conceal.

They have just watched the world’s most powerful military conduct an extended air campaign against Iran, and the result is that Iran now claims the right to permit or to deny passage through the waterway that those states depend on for their economic survival.

OK maybe this claim is negotiable. Maybe the next two weeks of talks can walk it back. Maybe Iran’s 10-point plan—which also demands the right to enrich uranium, the lifting of all sanctions, reparations, and the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region—is an opening bid, not a final offer. Opening bids are meant to be walked back.

But Iran enters these negotiations having demonstrated that its missile and drone arsenals are, in the words of one military analyst, “sustainable and survivable under massive U.S. and Israeli pressure.” Its supreme leader is dead, but his son now runs the show, and the wretched, oppressive, corrupt, radical structure that produced him remains.

There has been no regime change. Ask the Iranians. The regime has been battered, not broken. It goes to the table knowing what it survived. That is not a weak negotiating position.

The real scorecard.

President Trump’s stated war aims were sweeping: no nuclear Iran, no ballistic missiles, no blocking of the Strait, no support to proxies, the decapitation of the leadership, and—depending on which official you asked on which day—the overthrow of the regime itself.

Yeah. Not so much.

Against those declared war aims, honestly measured, the results are modest. Iran’s navy is largely gone. Its ancient air force is degraded. Khamenei is dead.

Everything else remains.

The proxies remain. The uranium remains. The missile infrastructure, battered but intact enough to matter, remains. The regime remains. And Iran’s leverage over the Strait has increased.

America’s allies in the Gulf are shaken. Relations with Europe—which opposed this war—are strained in ways that will not quickly mend.

The U.S. military has spent down readiness and resources that would be needed if China moves on Taiwan or the Korean Peninsula heats up. The global economy has absorbed a shock from the oil disruption whose full effects are not yet visible.

None of this means the ceasefire was wrong to accept. But stopping a war and winning one are very different things.

Trump will probably hold a parade.

—Terry