June 30, 2025 - 7:00am

Jerusalem

Here in Israel, people are conflicted. The mood is a mixture of satisfaction and relief about the IDF and Mossad’s recent success in hammering Iran, combined with fears that matters remain unresolved.

On both points, their instincts are correct. Operation Rising Lion was an extraordinary success, but the job is by no means done. Some journalists and analysts have begun referring to the “12-Day War”; really, there’s no such thing. This war began decades ago when Iran started assembling proxies to attack Israel, and it’s far from over. The Iranians have not surrendered. Their threat remains.

Indeed, it may yet become far greater. Yesterday afternoon, the Washington Post reported that Tehran officials considered the 21 June strikes, in which Washington dropped bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities, less damaging than expected. And according to Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran could resume uranium enrichment within months, potentially moving closer to a nuclear weapon.

Grossi rejected Donald Trump’s assertion that the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. While acknowledging the damage inflicted on the sites during the airstrikes, Grossi stressed that the damage was “not total”.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing left,” he said. Clearly, Iran’s nuclear programme remains to some degree intact.

On Saturday, Grossi told CBS News that Tehran could have “in a matter of months […] a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium”. He added that Iran still possessed the “industrial and technological capacities […] so if they wish, they will be able to start doing this again”. More to the point, Iran may also have the necessary materiel. Before the strikes, the IAEA assessed that Iran had a stockpile of about 400kg of enriched uranium.

Just days before the US airstrikes, satellite images showed trucks leaving the facilities, possibly carrying enriched uranium stockpiles — the crucial ingredient for any path to a bomb. Tehran has already been enriching uranium to 60%. If it wants a bomb, it needs to enrich this uranium to 90% — so-called “weapons-grade” levels, for which it then needs functioning centrifuges.

Even if the facilities aren’t destroyed completely, Israel can still prevent the Iranians from accessing what is left. Its military now controls Iran’s skies and could, from the air, create a cordon sanitaire around the sites, bombing anyone who tried to get close to them. Yet the possibility of a small hidden facility with sufficient number of centrifuges to enrich the uranium, and a surrounding infrastructure to weaponise it into a bomb, cannot be discounted.

Experts I’ve spoken to estimate that Iran could convert its 400 kg of enriched uranium into two bombs equivalent to those the US dropped on Hiroshima 80 years ago. These are backwards by modern standards, but more than enough to cause catastrophic damage.

The Iranians should be calculating that unless they are caught on the brink of developing the bomb, it’s unlikely the US will strike again. Trump came to power rejecting greater US involvement abroad, and has already angered his base over the matter. He wants it done and finished.

Meanwhile, the Israelis will continue to monitor the situation, desperately trying to find uranium — if it did indeed get out — and striking Iran if they feel it necessary. But that’s nothing new these days. We are where we were two weeks ago and two years ago and 20 years ago. Iran and Israel will fight on until the other is defeated. We can only hope this comes from the fall of the mullahs, rather than in a cloud of radiation.


David Patrikarakos is UnHerd‘s foreign correspondent. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)

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