Monday, June 23, 2025

Part I

---

The Days of False Negotiation are Over: The United States Attacks Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Sites

The tables can turn very, very quickly. That’s exactly what happened on Saturday. Saturday, US time; Sunday morning, Iran time when we now know American military forces undertook an attack on nuclear facilities in Iran. It was the first major head-to-head confrontation in military terms between the United States and Iran. It came just hours after President Trump had indicated that he would be making his decision within two weeks. What we now know is not only was the decision made, the aircraft were already in motion. It was an incredible operation that required a great deal of coordination and a lot of secrecy.

That secrecy really wasn’t broken until President Trump made his announcement on social media that the attack had been concluded. The military’s efforts to hide what it was doing, to put the matter bluntly, came down to the fact that there were bombers that took off B-2 bombers headed west over the Pacific. The press looked that way and so did many others, meanwhile the real planes in terms of this operation were flying the other way, a very effective deception.

But we are now in uncharted territory and we know that the American airstrikes against strategic nuclear installations there in Iran do represent a fundamental change in US policies. As I said, there hasn’t been a head-to-head confrontation. There is no doubt that the United States and Iran have been in a situation of hostilities going all the way back to the rise of the Islamic Republic in 1979. This fundamental change in US policy may lead, we may see, to a wider conflict, and that conflict could spiral out of control.

We understand right now as of this moment, the risks are huge, but it’s also clear that the danger was very, very evident. President Trump acted decisively and American forces did what they alone could do. We now know what happened. Powerful and stealthy B-2 bombers dropped as many as 15 massive GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Iran’s key nuclear installations, most importantly there at Fordow, but also at Natanz. And other ordnance, American ordnance, come launched from submarines hit the key facility at Isfahan where Iran is believed to store nuclear materials for bomb-making.

After the attack was announced in social media, shortly thereafter, within a matter of a couple of hours, President Trump addressed the nation in a four-minute address. He said, “This cannot continue,” speaking of Iran’s efforts to gain nuclear weapons. He also made clear that the United States was prepared to respond to any attack coming from Iran. In the President’s words, “Remember, there are many targets left.” He declared the mission to be a success. He challenged Iran openly and he warned the Islamic regime not to attack US forces. The president could not have been more clear, but now in coming days, we’re going to find out exactly how Iran will respond.

It’s also going to take some time for the impact and results of the US attack to be fully known. President Trump used the word “obliterated”. He said that the attacks had obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, but a Pentagon spokesman came back rather belatedly to say that obliterated is not actually a military word. It was nonetheless a major hit. But at this point, it’s going to take a good deal of military intelligence and perhaps even some eyes on the ground, so to speak, to be able to find out exactly how much damage was done, particularly there at Fordow. Huge questions loom. There’s simply no question about that.

The nation now starts a new week and we also face a new world reality. The United States and Iran, as I’ve said, have been adversaries for decades, going all the way back to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. That revolution brought the savage reigns of the Ayatollah to power and they featured the message, “Death to Israel” and they also declared the United States to be the great Satan. So from the very beginning, this Islamic regime, a regime of theocrats, have announced that Israel is no longer to exist, that is a national ambition and official ambition and aim of the Iranian regime, and the United States is the great Satan, which is to be opposed, it’s influence checked, and eventually it’s demise secured by the unfolding Islamic Revolution.

The United States and Iran have been close to war before. There have been military abrasions, you might say. There have also been proxy actions. That’s been the big thing. Iran has operated largely through its allies and you’ll recall that means Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas there in Gaza, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and it has also worked through other militias and, in particular, Militia groups in Iraq. But you’ve also had actions from the United States that have been basically sent by proxies. The United States in this sense would not refer to Israel as a proxy, but Israel has often acted in ways that are consistent with American purpose as well as Israeli self-protection.

But the days in which the United States and Iran avoided direct military action are over. The United States has now not only sided with Israel, that’s a big thing, by the way, we are standing with our ally, Israel. but we also are joining with our own military personnel, our own planes, our own bombs, military action against Iran in Iran. Last night, President Trump spoke openly even about the possibility of regime change in Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made similar statements.

All this as Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, released a list of chosen successors in the event that he is killed. That shows you something in the desperation. Media reports and military intelligence indicate that the Ayatollah is hidden away and because of the danger of tracking any kind of, for instance, cell phone signal, he is incommunicado. So, we don’t know exactly what’s going on there, but it is very interesting that both the Israeli Prime Minister and the American president has spoken now openly about regime change. Many Americans are going to be quite nervous about that, because when American officials and presidents of the United States have spoken to the possibility of regime change and promised that better things would come after that change of regime, it hasn’t always turned out that way. And if anything, in a recent experience, that’s an understatement. 

I think an honest analysis of the situation in Iran would indicate that as much as a regime change can only in one sense be a change in the right direction, the underlying problem is not just with the Ayatollahs and with this regime, but with the larger theocracy and the hold of militant Islam on the part of so many people. You hear especially analysts in the West say there is this building energy for liberty and for human rights and for a loosening of theocratic controls in Iran, but the bottom line is we really don’t know.

For Christians, let’s recognize there are huge issues here: moral issues, political issues, even theological dimensions to these developments. It’s just been over a week since Israel began its direct action against Iran. And of course, that raised a host of issues. One of the big issues that came up is whether Israel had the right to do this. The very fact that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons to use against Israel and had identified the elimination of Israel, the non-existence of Israel as a national goal, that would be under almost any understanding, a justifiable reason for Israel to act. Israel also made claims about the evidence of how much progress Iran had made illegally in terms of developing a nuclear weapon, and there were independent authorities who basically said about the same thing.

Looking at Israeli effort, we need to say, number one, it was stunningly successful. It eliminated not only much of the nuclear weapons facilities, but a good many of the scientists, and as a matter of fact, many are saying almost all the frontline scientists in that program. The Israelis were also able to eliminate much of Iran’s senior military leadership. One senior military officer in Iran admitted, and I quote, “Our senior officers were all assassinated within one hour.”, end quote. That’s just stunning. Once again, Israel had surprised the world. It is now known that the Israeli defense forces and intelligence agents had placed weapons and drones well within Iran weeks ahead of the attack.

Let’s just think about that for a moment. And as we’re thinking about changes in the entire landscape of warfare, let’s consider what Ukraine was able to do inside Russia with forward-placed drones, and now what Israel was able to do in Iran with forward-placed drones. Let’s just remember what that means. It means forward-placing, within enemy territoryl weapons to be used against the enemy, including drones as delivery systems. That’s a new development. And you can trust me on this, it has the attention of military specialists and defense specialists all over the world. This is a game-changer. And in a remarkably short amount of time it happened not just in one military conflict but now in two. That means, by the way, that the Ukrainians and the Israelis were making some of those forward placements at virtually the same time, presumably unknown one to the other. This represents a major change in military tactics.

Speaking of Israel’s ability to place these weapons in forward positions in Iran, one official at the Iranian government said, “It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach. There is no denying this.” In one sense, that’s just stating the obvious, but in a time of war like this, nations hit as hard as Iran sometimes are unwilling to state the obvious. But what Iran’s going to do now, that is the big question. What Israel could not do was to penetrate into Iran’s Fordow facility because it’s buried deep within a mountain. And you’ve probably seen by now the aerial intelligence sometimes coming from satellites showing the depth of the mountain and the sophistication of Iran’s defenses.

What did make a difference was the giant “bunker buster” bombs possessed only by the United States, and deliverable only on massive American bombers. We’re talking about 30,000 pound bombs, just in terms of the ordnance in each case. These American bombers remain the only adequate delivery system when it comes to these conventional weapons. And we can only hope the bombs did their work well. What do we know now? What are we to make of all of this? Let’s talk about some of the pressing questions. These questions are pressing indeed. And of course, you could begin with the technology.

Here’s a United States ordnance, a United States bomb, that was designed to be able to penetrate something like 200 feet within concrete as a kinetic weapon before detonating as an explosive weapon. This is something that is just hard for most of us to imagine. A kinetic weapon is one that uses mere physical energy, so it’s not an explosive charge that gets that missile so deep within the rock, 200 feet, and then is able to explode. It is kinetic energy. This is sheer genius.

One of the sad things about this is that though the United States is the only nation believed to possess these weapons at present, and even though this was the first time these weapons had actually been used in combat, the reality is that a nation rarely has these kinds of weapons for long before someone else copies them. There are other technological questions, the drones and all the rest, but the big issues are not technological, they’re moral, they’re political. And some of them are quite historical in terms of the amount of time human beings, especially in the Western world, struggled with many of these questions.

Part II

---

Does the President Have the Constitutional Right to Launch This Kind of Attack? Criticism of the Attack on Iran Raises Major Questions

First, let’s ask this question: Did President Trump act constitutionally and with lawful constitutional authority in ordering this strike? I’m going to argue the answer to that is almost certainly yes. The United States Constitution explicitly authorizes the president of the United States to act as commander-in-chief. And that power, that authority is invested in the president because the president’s the president all the time. There is never a time when the president cannot immediately act as president of the United States, and commander-in-chief. Congress doesn’t act that way. Congress can’t act that way. Congress can act only in session. So, that is not a good situation. And by the way, especially when you look back to, say, 1789, the origins of the Constitution, just imagine what it would’ve taken to call Congress into session. By that time, the battle could be over. So, much of this was invested in a president of the United States able to act quickly.

But there’s another dynamic here, and you can trace this not only in terms of the Constitution, you can trace this in terms of legislation, such as The War Powers Act. Here’s the reality: Congress says it has the sole authority to declare war. True or false? Absolutely true. But Congress has been absolutely inept in dealing with this responsibility for a matter of decades now. This is a bipartisan problem. On both political sides, among Democrats and Republicans, especially when the incumbent presidents of the opposing party, you hear a lot of criticism. Right now. President Trump’s obviously a Republican, so you hear Democrats criticizing him for acting unconstitutionally or extra-constitutionally. I don’t think he did, but you can understand this criticism comes.

But this needs to be turned back to Congress, because Congress could act if it would act. But there’s a lot going on here. For one thing, I think most members of Congress, most representatives and most senators, even though they have a great interest and a lot of responsibility when it comes to national security, they pretty much understand they’re not in the position of the commander-in-chief. And especially when it comes to widespread congressional knowledge, there are going to be a lot of things that aren’t going to be shared even within that context. Or at least by the time they are shared, the usefulness or the event is largely over.

George Will at the Washington Post helpfully pointed out that the last time the United States Congress acted to declare war was in 1942. That was in the middle of World War II and had to do with some of the nations that had allied with Nazi Germany. 1942 is a long time ago. The United States has been involved in many military actions since then. Many of them are not referred to as wars, precisely because Congress did not officially declare them as wars. But on the ground, they were wars. It’s one of the reasons why we do refer to, say, the war in Iraq. And with or without Congressional permission, the name sticks. .

Congress could reassert itself in this process in other ways. One of the ways it tries to do that, sometimes at least in a delayed fashion, is through the power of the purse. But actions like this really do fall to the commander-in-chief and criticism of the President, and almost every case is predictable, but let’s also remember that talk is cheap.

Part III

---

Was the U.S. Attack on Iran Justified? What About Just War Theory? Christians Have Even More to Consider About the Attack on Iran

Second: Was the attack justified? I would argue that by almost any measure, the attack was justified by the clear and present danger represented by Iran’s rogue nuclear program. Frankly, let’s be honest, the entire civilized world really counted on Israel to act and counted on the United States to act, even as our own timid allies were reserved the right to claim some detachment. It’s pretty amazing to see, but it’s not surprising to see, even as it is disappointing to see.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the American action “a dangerous escalation.” He said, and I quote, “There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy. The only hope is peace.” Let me just underline the fact diplomacy hadn’t worked. I think President Trump put too much hope in diplomacy and he came to the conclusion it didn’t work. That statement made by the UN’s secretary-general simply reveals the decomposition of the United Nations as a meaningful force in world affairs. The UN used to be all bark and no bite. Now I would argue it doesn’t even bark.

The third issue is big. The third question, let’s ask it openly: Based upon Christian, historic, biblical, theological, ethical reasoning, based in historic just war theory, were the facts and conditions of just war satisfied? It’s a good question. This is a question that’s entirely on Christian terrain. It is interesting, however, that even in a secular age, secularized versions of these conditions have appeared in most attempts at international law. Let’s just go through those facts and conditions.

The military action, if it is just, according to just war theory, if it is justified, must be defensive rather than offensive. This situation fits that. This was a defensive action. It wasn’t that Iran had directly attacked the United States. It was that Iran was developing the power to attack, and not only the United States, but other nations, and in particular Israel, the nonexistence of which it had pledged itself to achieve. So, it is not necessary for a defensive action to wait for a successful offensive action. So in that sense, yes, it was defensive. It met the facts and conditions.

The second requirement is that military action be lawfully authorized. Again, I would argue that did happen. Third, the action must be proportionate to the threat. Proportionate means if you have the threat of an attack or you have some kind of attack, you don’t respond to it with, say, the total military attack upon a nation. It has to be proportionate. In this case, the effort certainly appears to be proportionate. The question is whether it was adequate, whether there was enough force used. The next fact or condition that must be met is that the attack must be directed to military targets, not civilians. Absolutely clear that that was the case in these three locations of the American attack. 

It must also be an action of last resort. And here again, I don’t think there’s any better evidence of that than the fact that President Trump in both of his terms and office had indicated that he very much wanted to achieve an agreement, some kind of a peaceful agreement with Iran. But Iran continued to break all the rules, and quite honestly, Iran was not an honest partner in this. So, I do believe, in that sense, it was a last resort, especially since we now know far more about how far Iran had advanced towards a workable nuclear weapon.

Finally, the just war tradition says that a military action, if just, must seek to achieve a stable peace, and I think that’s exactly what the United States wants. The United States does not want expanded military contact with Iran. The United States does not want additional US military presence in the Middle East. That is profoundly not what the United States wants. And I don’t think Israel wants to be in a perpetual state of war with Iran. The effort to achieve some kind of peaceful settlement, I think that is very much a part of what’s going on with the United States and Israel, but not at any cost and certainly not at the cost of fatal dishonesty.

Part IV

---

The Military Intelligence Behind the Attack on Iran: You Too Could Have Read Enough to Know About It in The Wall Street Journal

There’s evidence I want to bring forward here. The Wall Street Journal, before the attack was known, that’s really important. So, before the attack was known, the Wall Street Journal had run an interview with David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and it makes reference to the report that was released the last day of May by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This wasn’t Israel, this wasn’t the US, this was the International Atomic Energy Agency which reported that Iran had processed over 900 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%.

90% is the enrichment level that is required for a nuclear weapon, so you go from 60% enrichment to 90% enrichment. You look at it that way, I’ll just tell you in simple math, it looks like the uraniums are two-thirds of the way there. If it took them, say, two years to get two thirds, you think it would take them another year to get the other third.

But David Albright who, again, is a nuclear scientist, he’s president of the Institute for Science and International Security, he told the Wall Street Journal that what it meant that Iran had 900 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% is that Iran could, and these are his words, “make enough weapons-grade uranium for 11 nuclear weapons within a month.” So, as he points out, by the time you reach 60%, the 60 to 90% is a very short leap. It can be done very effectively in a very short time. Trust me, Israel knows that. And trust me, the White House knew that. 

But frankly, as of Saturday morning before the attack, you could have known that because it was published in the Wall Street Journal. Once that was determined, Israel was already basically in action. While the world talked, Israel had the courage to act. As of Sunday morning, Iran time, the United States had acted too.

Let’s ask another set of honest questions, very quickly. Where will this end? The answer is: We honestly have no idea. We don’t know where this is going to end. Was the attack the right action to take? Time’s going to tell. One of the things we now know in retrospect is that it’s very difficult to judge the effectiveness or efficacy of this kind of military action immediately after the action. It takes some time for the result of this kind of action to be known. Will this lead to a wider war in the region? Let’s admit, it is a risk, but we hope not. In the final analysis, only the Iranians can answer that question. One way or the other, they’re going to answer that question. And in all likelihood, they’re going to answer that question pretty quickly.

But there’s another dimension to this that should trouble us all, and that is the fact that Iran has demonstrated the ability, through terrorism, to participate very much in asymmetrical warfare. So, we have to worry that the response will not just be something coming officially from, say, the military forces of Iran, but perhaps sleeper cells, perhaps even in Western nations that would rise up to take this kind of military action. What will this do to the President’s political coalition? That’s a very interesting question. Something we will track as we look at the future.

There was this famous exchange between Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz in the days leading up to the attack, when you saw within the MAGA base, within Trump’s political base, a radical distinction. And it is clear that President Trump both ran on a platform of non-intervention where possible, and he was supported on a platform of non-intervention where possible. And it should tell us something that in this situation, he decided that military intervention was necessary and he had to know because he does know how to measure these things, that it would come at a cost to his own constituency.

We’ll see in coming days whether that divide is deep and permanent or whether facts on the ground are going to change that equation. Once again, as in so many of these situations, time’s going to tell and it’s going to take some time before we know. On the political side, let’s face it, the politics of this unfolding crisis in one sense are going to have to wait. For now, the United States and Israel militarily have acted thus far alone. We must pray that this justified military action will lead to verified success. Right now, that’s the most pressing issue.

Part V

---

Is This Iraq All Over Again? Republicans Wrestle with Question of Whom Trust

Before leaving this issue, I want to go to another side of all of this and it gets to that political divide, but it gets further to the question: Who do you trust? When you look at that exchange between, say, Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz, one of the issues at stake, whether it was clearly articulated or not, is whether you trust officials, say, in the government when they say that Iran is very close to developing a nuclear weapon.

Peggy Noonan, very interesting person to comment on this, she’s been at this a long time, closely identified with President George H.W. Bush and to some degree with President Reagan as well. She was a speechwriter for President Reagan. She has for a long time been a political commentator. She writes that at least a part of this historically is certainly due to fact that many conservatives, many Republicans, as well as many Democrats, the issue here is Republicans, came to the conclusion that President George W. Bush in terms of the second military action there in Iraq and expanding into Afghanistan, that the claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false.

So, there’s a huge debate within the historical circles as to whether or not the Bush White House had good reason to question the claim about weapons of mass destruction. But the point is, and I think Peggy Noonan is right about this, you see a basic divide where you hear an awful lot of people who are supporters of the President say, “The president enacted, but did he act on bad information? Are we going to find out, like in Iraq, that the claims about Iran’s military capabilities and the processing of this uranium, how close they were to developing nuclear weapons, is that going to turn out to be as lacking in evidence as was the supposed weapons of mass destruction that were possessed by Saddam Hussein?”

We’re going to have to respond to that by saying, “By definition, you can’t answer that question right now. We don’t know what’s going to be revealed later.” It’s one of the reasons why I think it’s really important that all the credible evidence be brought forward now. I don’t mean classified information. But as I said already, what the White House knew and what Israel knew at the last of May, as released in information from the International Atomic Energy Agency, you could have known. That was printed in public. And as I say, that interview with David Albright was published in the Wall Street Journal, basically available just hours before the American attack.

In this situation, I do think we have a very different media environment, we have a very different information environment, I think it’s much more difficult for governments to say we have all of this evidence, and I think it’s one of the reasons why the governments themselves are making very clear here’s the independent evidence upon which this kind of argument is based. It is also a humbling fact for human beings to know that the most informed, you look at the President of the United States with all the advisors, all the counselors, all the cabinet, with the American Intelligence agencies, the massive network of our defense system, the fact is the president is captive to the information available to him. Some of that information, by the way, not available to us.

But it is just a fact of leadership that at the end of the day, even the president of the United States is facing limited information, and sometimes information that in one way or another will prove to have been false. The issue here comes down to credibility and also the openness of these claims. And I think in this case, when it comes to Iran developing nuclear weapons, the case is pretty overwhelming. The evidence is abundant and it’s pretty readily available to anyone, not just to intelligence agencies.

But if you demand absolute certainty about this, let me just remind you that absolute certainty about Iran and a nuclear bomb would be absolutely available way too late.