Is Iran Really a Threat to the United States? A Debate.

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This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm David Leonhardt, the director of the New York Times editorial board. Every week, I'm having conversations to shape the board's opinions. This week, we want to make sense of the war in Iran. Have Israel and the United States achieved their goals?

Does Iran still have a nuclear program? And is the ceasefire real? To answer these questions, I've invited two guests with very different points of view. One is my colleague, columnist Brett Stevens, who has applauded President Trump's strikes in Iran. Brett, welcome. Good to see you, David. The other is Rosemary Kalanick, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, a think tank.

Rosemary warned against the U.S. getting involved before Trump bombed Iran. Rosemary, welcome. Thank you.

We're recording this on Tuesday morning, and I want to start by asking you roughly where you think we are and where this is going. So on the one hand, President Trump has referred to this as the 12-day war, suggesting that it's over. And on the other hand, President Trump came...

out on Tuesday morning and lashed out at both Israel and Iran for continuing to fight longer and more intensely than he wanted. So, Brett, I'm interested. Do you think we're going to look back on this as the 12-day war? And do you think this part of the I think... The Israelis feel that they have accomplished, if not all, then many of their strategic military goals in substantially degrading Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. doing very real, although we still don't.

yet know how substantial damage to Iran's nuclear endeavors. And then finally bringing in the United States to bomb and presumably massively degrade. Again, we don't quite know. the extent of it, Iran's facilities underground at Fordow. So I think the Israelis feel like if they haven't accomplished 100% of their goals, they've accomplished 80% of them.

President Trump, I think, feels very much like he's accomplished a goal. He said Iran would not get nuclear weapons. He took action that appeared to be decisive. So far, the blowback from Iran appears to be really minimal. Although, again... early days, this could unfold over a long period of time. Rosemary, what do you think? Do you think we're going to look back on this as the 12-day war or something longer?

Well, I think I agree with Brett that I certainly hope so. I certainly hope that any military kinetic phase of this dispute is over, but I am much more pessimistic that this could turn out to be the intermission rather than the end. I was against Trump getting the United States involved in the war for a number of reasons. But the biggest reason is that there was no urgency in the sense that US intelligence had consistently assessed that Iran was not engaged in weapons.

research, right? That they had enrichment capabilities, but that they were not actively trying to weaponize the program. And doing so would take an extra six months to a year at minimum. So there was no urgency. But then also by attacking...

I fear that is going to prove counterproductive. Because whereas before, it was quite clear to me that the Iranians were signaling that they did not actually want a nuclear weapon. They wanted sanctions relief, and they're playing this brinksmanship game and using this sort of latent nuclear weapon.

threat or deterrent to get what they wanted out of negotiations. It was pretty clear to me they didn't actually really want a bomb or they would have built one. But now the U.S. has given them a huge incentive to build a bomb.

Now, it doesn't mean they're actually going to build it, but since we've actually struck them, and we struck them in the middle of a negotiations process, we've made them extremely insecure, and countries that are insecure are more interested in getting a nuclear weapons deterrent. So I'm afraid that even if in the short term, this turns out to be a pause or a 12-day war, it could usher in future conflict.

Well, let's pull those two things apart. So you talked, Rosemary, both about urgency, which to some extent is backward looking, and about the idea that you're worried it's counterproductive, which is forward looking. So Brett, can you talk about why you saw a degree of urgency? that Rosemary and people who were against this attack didn't see?

Yeah, I mean, I'm always reminded of that wonderful line attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan that intelligence must never be mistaken for intelligence. Look, the Israelis had a very different assessment. owing partly, I think, to superior collection methods, which they've demonstrated again and again they have, of the state of Iran's nuclear program.

Their assessments were that Iran was much closer, that they had been, in fact, working on elements of bomb designs. But I think there's also a kind of a confusion about The way in which bombs get made and the timetable, it's not like you pass a finish line, so to speak, like a Trinity test in the New Mexico desert.

What happens really is that countries enter into a kind of a nuclear gray zone as they're developing weapons. They've acquired sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium. That's part one of it. They have developed ballistic missiles which can deploy or field miniaturized nuclear warheads. And what Iran was doing was sort of very systematically putting together all of those components.

in a way that didn't quite provide a clear line which would say to Western intelligence officials, okay, this is the point of no return, but was getting incredibly close, uncomfortably close. I think for the Israelis, the sense was that they had to strike before Iran had acquired sufficient quantities of uranium enriched to a 90% level, which is what's... broadly considered weapons-grade uranium. They've gotten to 60%, which is very, very close. So from that point of view...

It seemed that the urgency, at least from the Israeli perspective, was there. There was also an opportunity for the Israelis because they had previously substantially degraded. iran's anti-air capabilities so they had a kind of um they had a moment of opportunity uh an opening and the question that ultimately needs to be raised isn't like whether Israel waited till the last possible minute or the next to last possible minute. The real question about urgency is just how serious a threat.

Should we see an Iran with a nuclear capability, not only to Israel's interest or Middle Eastern interest, but to core American interests? I think the answer is it was an urgent, pressing threat, and there was an opportunity to do something about it. And Israel seized that opportunity, and Donald Trump followed up with what I hope was a decisive blow. I agree with Brett that there was an opportunity here with, you know, the degradation of Iranian capabilities that didn't exist before, 100%.

But I think that we need to be critical of the claims that Israel made about intelligence. I don't think we can just take them at face value because Israel has a dog in the fight. They have a political agenda here. They clearly have wanted to bring the United States into war.

against Iran and to use U.S. firepower to target these sites for a very long time. And in fact, the intelligence has been wrong over and over again. I mean, the number of times that Israel has cried wolf on Iranian nuclear weapons is... astounding. Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Israeli Knesset in 1992 that Iran was three to five years away. He repeated that warning in 1995. In 2012, he went to the UN with a Wile E. Coyote-looking sort of bomb graphic and said that...

that Iran was only a year away from obtaining a nuclear bomb. So I don't trust Israeli intelligence on this. I trust U.S. intelligence on this. And U.S. intelligence ascertained the opposite. Well, of course Israel has a dog in the fight because the Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening its annihilation, has been threatening a second Holocaust since it came into power in 1979. So I think it's quite natural if you're...

any Israeli leader of the left or of the right that you're going to take this threat with the utmost seriousness because this is a regime that states its intentions and then amasses capabilities in order to carry them out. I don't think we can... fault the Israelis for taking this threat seriously. The reason that we have not had to deal with this previously is because high quality Israeli intelligence has been succeeding in postponing, delaying.

retarding Iran's nuclear bids for decades. The reason these warnings have not sort of come to fruition is because... covert action by Israelis succeeded for a remarkable period of time to consistently postpone Iran's nuclear bids.

Now, it is true that intelligence is sometimes wrong, but I think that the Israelis have demonstrated a capacity for close... remarkable intelligence that I am guessing their counterparts at the CIA could only dream of in terms of the granularity with which they've been able to track down Iranian capabilities and figures. in that system and harm them. But...

The larger point, Rosemary, which Friedrich Mertz, the German chancellor, made just the other day, and I think it's worth noting, is you don't build a uranium enrichment facility 300, 200, 300 meters underground if your intentions are peaceful. You just don't. Rosemary, I want to try to understand how you think about this a little bit. I understand that Brett views

an Iranian nuclear program as an intolerable threat. And I'm curious, do you view it as something that the United States can live with or maybe has to live with, has no way to stop? Or do you instead view it as something that is also intolerable, but you didn't think it was close enough at this point to reality to justify military action? It's more the latter. I mean, I think we agree. I don't want Iran to get...

I do not think that that would be a good outcome here. I think, unfortunately, the steps that have been taken make it more likely that they will ultimately get nuclear weapons, not less likely. Whether Iran with nuclear weapons is an intolerable threat... I think breaks down into two questions. One, is it an intolerable threat to Israel?

100%. If I was the Israelis, I would be extremely upset about this. I would not want Iran to be anywhere close to a nuclear program. I think everything that they've done makes perfect sense. Honestly, I do. For the United States, though, this is not a direct threat to the United States, right? It's just not. Iran can't reach the United States. They don't have missiles that can reach the U.S. homeland. They have never attacked the United States homeland. Are they a bad actor? Oh, yeah.

oh yeah, they've caused lots of problems in the region, but they can't hit the United States and have shown no interest in doing so. And the fact of the matter is, I believe a lot in nuclear deterrence. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. We have overwhelming conventional capabilities. We have overwhelming nuclear capabilities. And we can retaliate against Iran. We could probably even prevent them from doing it.

or preempt any kind of Iranian attack. Israel is not in that same situation. Israel is much more vulnerable to Iran. So I do think it's a much thornier problem for them. And the United States does need to worry about that because the United States cares about Israel.

think that we can conflate it as a threat against the United States. I think for some people, Rosemary, there's something a little bit counterintuitive about the idea that this attack could accelerate. the Iranian program. Iran had these three sites. The U.S. and Israel together have done enormous damage to them. So can you spool out for us how is it that this attack, in your view, could actually accelerate?

an Iranian nuclear program? Yeah, so that's a great question. And I need to draw a distinction between the capabilities and the intent, right? So capabilities, it definitely slows down their ability to pursue. a nuclear program, let alone a nuclear weapons program, right? 100% it does that. However, it gives them urgency and an incentive to go from a civilian nuclear program to a weapons program.

It would take them longer to get to a bomb if that's in fact what they want. But I'm not convinced that that is what Iran wanted. If Iran wanted to build a nuclear weapon, they could have done it many years ago. They had already achieved quote-unquote zero breakout capacity. in June of 2022, according to David Albright. They could have built a weapon then, and they did not. That says to me that they were not hellbent on getting a nuclear weapon. Now, if they are hellbent on getting it,

This will help prevent them from getting it sooner. But I think that they were not hellbent on getting it. And by attacking them, we are risking making them hellbent on getting it. Does that make sense?

So can I just go back to something Rosemary said a little bit earlier? I think the conversation we're getting into is a really interesting one about what this attack will mean for Iran's intentions. I want to push back on Rosemary's contention that Iran, nuclear Iran, is not a direct threat to the United States. First of all, if you can lob a missile, say, 1,200 miles, you're going to sooner or later master the technology to lob a missile 7,000 miles or whatever it is.

whatever the range is of an intercontinental ballistic missile. And Iran is a country that is... Busy trying to carry out assassinations on American soil, including my friend Masi Alinejad, including our sometime contributor John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor of the United States. The Iranians have demonstrated time and again that they're... up for playing dirty tricks at a great distance. But the more important threat, the thing that really...

should keep American decision makers up at night, is what an Iranian bomb would mean for proliferation in the Middle East. Because if Iran were to acquire a bomb tomorrow, then the Saudis would surely get a bomb either by buying it from the Pakistanis or developing it. an indigenous capability. The Turks would do it. The Egyptians would do it. Perhaps the Algerians would do it. And then you have to ask yourself as a decision maker in Washington, do you really want...

Five or six nuclear weapon states in the world's most volatile region, each of them at daggers drawn with one another. All of a sudden, figuring out the kind of nature of deterrence in a region like that becomes really terrifying. for American decision makers. So the interest in the United States in preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon isn't simply that this is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism in possession of the world's worst weapons.

It's the chain reaction that it sets off throughout the region. Okay, so a couple of things. I agree. I mean, I'm not a proliferation dove. The best outcome... for the United States, is for the United States to have a nuclear weapon and nobody else in the world to have one. Like, no country should ever want other countries to have nuclear weapons pointed at them. 100%. Okay?

But the whole argument about nuclear dominoes is just not borne out by history. I think that there would be negative repercussions if Iran got nuclear weapons for the regional balance, but I do not believe they would play out the way that Brett suggested. The Saudis would not get a bomb.

Saudis would get a security guarantee from the United States to prevent them from ever getting a bomb. That is what we have done with allies in the past. It's what we did with South Korea. It's why they don't have a bomb. It's what we did with Japan. It's why they don't have a bomb. It's what we did with Germany. It's why they don't have a bomb.

personally don't want to give the Saudis American security guarantees because I don't trust them not to then run amok in the region and cause problems for us if we give them security guarantees. But that's the obvious solution to that problem.

Brett, let me push you a little bit on one question, which is given how strongly you think Iran wants a nuclear weapon. How does this end now as opposed to Iran continuing to try to do it and us essentially being committed to continued bombing in the future? We've heard that Iran potentially moved some of their uranium. It certainly seems like...

They now have even more reason to want a nuclear weapon than they did before. So where do you see Iran's nuclear program going? And how worried are you that we've essentially committed ourselves to future rounds of bombing by having done? this? Well, I think the choice that confronted the Trump administration wasn't between Iran with bomb and Iran with no bomb. It was Iran with bomb and Iran with hopefully no bomb. The Iranians were

Moving into a gray zone where it would have become almost impossible to stop them through military means. But we've probably retarded their program by some substantial period of time. It's not easy to reassemble all of the industrial equipment that goes. into making nuclear weapons. It's not easy to find ways to do so in secret now that the Iranian regime knows that it's been so deeply penetrated by Israeli intelligence. And it's not easy to do so in the teeth of a president who is now

that he really is willing to use force if necessary. So my guess is that it'll actually be many years before Iran can reassemble what it had on the eve of its war with Israel just 12 or whatever, 13, 14 days ago. Now does that mean that Iran will now sort of see the light, understand that it needs to invest in

economic development rather than squander it on nuclear capability? I don't know, but I think there's actually a better chance of it than people think. Now, Rosemary could turn out to be right here, that the... lesson that the Iranians will draw is we should have gotten a nuclear weapon much sooner.

We're going to be hell-bent on acquiring one. Now, all of our national endeavors are going to go into this. Khamenei could be replaced by an IRGC leader even more extreme and less cautious than he is. All of that is totally within. the realm of possibility, but also within the realm of possibility, is that they will see that they invested $500 billion of national treasure into a wasted effort that cost them nothing but humiliation.

and loss of hardware and prestige. They are in a much poor strategic position thanks to Israeli actions in Gaza, in Lebanon, and in Syria. They may well choose. out of national interest and the interest of the preservation of their regime to recalibrate and seek to do something else. And by the way, it's also possible that not now, but in six months, a year's time.

When the next morality policeman beats up and murders an Iranian woman in the streets, setting off demonstrations that a much weaker and uncertain regime will have a harder time pressing. through with the engines of repression as they had in the past. I think it makes the regime more vulnerable over time to internal changes and hopefully positive ones. What do you think of that, Rosemary?

I hope that Brett's right. I hope that Iran takes this lesson as a reason to go ahead and get rid of their nuclear program and comply with all these U.S. demands and become a more... you know, responsible, you know, less belligerent actor in the region. That is possibilities. But what I'm worried the most about is that everybody understands attacking Iran makes Iran angry, makes Iran feel insecure.

and increases their motivations to want a bomb. And what I'm afraid will happen is that even if Iran... puts all its cards on the table and says, here are all the facilities. Here is all the stuff. Bring all the people in. Bring in the IAEA inspectors. We're coming clean. We're giving it all up. I'm worried that that won't be enough for Israel. Iran could reasonably argue that they did that in 2015 with the JCPOA.

that they did that, that they put their cards on the table and complied. And it still wasn't enough to reassure the United States and Israel that it was not going to get nuclear weapons. And certainly the sort of flirtation with regime change that Trump has posted on social media. and that Netanyahu is occasionally referenced, doesn't help Iran not feel worried about that possibility.

Problem is, if there's no trust with Israel, which I don't blame them for not trusting Iran, right? Iran retaliated and killed Israelis. Like, Israel should be mad at Iran. But how will Israel know that they can ever really trust Iran? They won't. When I look at what has happened since October 7th, 2023, to Iran in particular, even if some of the details have been problematic, I look at Iran as a malevolent force in the world.

that's killed a lot of Americans over the years, that is very clear that it wants to destroy the state of Israel. And I see in Iran that over the last nearly three years is vastly weakened in ways that honestly I couldn't. have predicted. Its proxy forces, Hamas and Hezbollah, are vastly weakened. Its nuclear program is weakened, even if it now has a bigger incentive to do it. And I look at that as an American and as someone who favors democracy.

And that... cheers me in some ways, that a force for ill in the world, a country that has this phrase, death to America, and that has really caused a lot of pain and suffering over the last several decades, is much, much weaker and much... less able to cause that suffering. And I think you look at that differently. And so I want to ask you to tell me why you think that framing that I put on it is either wrong or incomplete. I mean, look, I don't want to make any excuses for Iran.

Iran has put themselves in this situation, right? They do chant things like death to Israel and death to America, right? They are the world's largest state-sponsored terrorism. Now, that doesn't mean that they're a threat to the United States, right? They are not sponsoring terrorism against the United States. They have not attacked the United States on its own soil, right? After 9-11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and made it—

100% clear that any regime that allows somebody from their country to attack the United States homeland is going to get overthrown. Like, we have made a very credible promise that if Iran ever allowed somebody within Iran to attack the U.S. homeland... we would go and overthrow Iran. So I am not worried that Iran, as awful as they are, I am not worried that they are going to attack the United States.

In the near future, you know, aside from, apart from the fact that we just bombed them. Ultimately, you have to think that they're suicidal to be willing to attack the United States when the United States has... conventional preponderance, and nuclear preponderance.

And I, you know, I do see evidence of some rationality and restraint coming out of Iran in terms of how they responded to the U.S. attack, right? They could have gone all out and attacked a bunch of U.S. forward operating bases in Syria and Iraq that are super vulnerable.

that don't have a lot of missile defense. And they didn't do that, right? They had a very calibrated sort of escalate to de-escalate sort of response. If the United States really thinks that Iran might be trying to get a nuclear weapon and that, you know... There's no end to what that's going to require the United States to do.

Either we have boots on the ground in the form of IAEA inspectors who go to these sites and say, yes, they've been destroyed, and yes, Iran is complying. That's one way to make sure they don't get the bomb. But the other way is with a regime change operation that I'm worried that...

some risk that the United States might go down that road. And I think that that would be a disaster for everybody. I don't think that's something that a lot of people really want to have happen. I don't think that the president wants to have happen. But I do think that's a concern.

That actually perfectly tees up my closing question for you, Brett, which is, when the United States has gotten involved in the Middle East and the broader region in the 21st century, I think it's ended badly every time. Afghanistan, the second Iraq war, Libya. And to some extent, what I think I hear you saying is this one can end.

better. And I know a lot of people heard when President Trump came out and announced this attack and talked about in his Trumpian language how it had been the greatest attack that anyone's ever seen. I think people heard echoes of George W. Bush with mission accomplished. So I'm interested in why you think this operation has a chance to be the first U.S. military involvement in the Middle East in the 21st century that's going to end well, or if you think... I'm framing that question unfairly.

Well, it remains to be seen. But when I think of the parade of horribles that we were hearing from people like Tucker Carlson, thousands of Americans dead if the United States were to bomb. Fordow, it seems that this, as we're speaking now, that this has been an astonishing success, the destruction or massive degradation of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

in a swift period of time at no cost so far to American lives and with the Iranians very swiftly signaling that they want to back down, both vis-a-vis the United States and also with... with the Israelis. I'm a great believer in Churchill's phrase in victory magnanimity, and I think a lot will depend on how the United States proceeds diplomatically.

from here. One of the things that I have suggested for the Trump administration, I wrote this in a column just last week, is essentially first bomb Fordow, of course, Natanz and Isfahan, but then offer the following deal. which I think would be a very useful one, even if the Iranians reject it, which is this, that in exchange for Iran verifiably abandoning its enrichment...

programs and its nuclear programs, and an end to their support for proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas, that the United States lift all economic sanctions. We should find ways to entice the Iranian regime with proverbial offerings. that no sane country can refuse to see if we can...

turn a new leaf. But, you know, as Niels Bohr or Yogi Berra or someone said, prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. So I don't want to discount anything that Rosemary has said in terms of how this might affect the regime going forward. It's an open and

interesting and in many ways, of course, a terrifying question. Rosemary, even if you think that deal is unlikely, would you welcome it? Yes. 100%. Yes. Well, that is a good place to end it on a point of shared hope. Rosemary, Rhett? Thank you so much. Thank you. And let me add a thank you to Aspen Ideas Health for letting me record today.

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