Six Ways Trump's Bombing of Iran Made the Middle East – and the US – Less Safe
I was a US intelligence analyst. Trump just gave Iran and other countries more reason than ever to build a nuclear weapon in secret.
America’s arsonist-firefighter President Donald Trump has once again resolved a crisis of his own creation – at least for now. But what did he break along the way?
Trump has termed the US-Israel-Iran war the “12-Day War” in cheeky reference to Israel’s 1967 Six Day War (remembered by Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors as the Naksa, or “setback”), when Israel quickly defeated several Arab armies, captured the West Bank and Gaza, and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The comparison is more apt than Trump realizes. The 1967 war was also an unprovoked Israeli war of aggression, greenlit by a US president, that destabilized the region for decades.
Here are six ways Trump’s sequel promises to further endanger people in the Middle East – and around the world:
1. Iran has more reason than ever to build a nuclear weapon in secret.
By greenlighting Israel’s attacks in the middle of US-Iran nuclear talks, and then joining the war himself, Trump embarrassed the moderates in Iran’s government and vindicated hardliners who have long argued that negotiating with America was a losing proposition. The war elevated the influence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and convinced Iran’s parliament to curtail international observers’ access to Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has likely relocated and hidden some of its highly enriched uranium and may still possess intact centrifuges and other key equipment needed to work toward a nuclear weapon. What is certain is that the Iranian government now has every incentive to conceal its nuclear activities.