Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for realtor.com, the pros number one most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one. With over 500,000 new listings every month, you can find the one today.
Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com.
Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, June 22nd. I'm Luke Vargas with The Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. And on today's show, the U.S. strikes Iran. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.
Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. We'll get the latest on the results of Washington's attacks and Iran's response and consider what the future could hold for the regime in Tehran. Let's get right to it.
We rarely timestamp these Sunday episodes, but we've got to this week because of the pace of news. It is just after 4 a.m. Sunday morning in Washington, a little after 11 a.m. in Tel Aviv and around 1130 in Tehran. In a literal sense, the dust may have settled in Iran from these U.S. strikes, but Iran has already retaliated. And of course, big questions are being raised about the significance of what we've witnessed here.
To recap what's occurred and answer some of those questions, I'm joined by Wall Street Journal Middle East Bureau Chief Andrew Dowell.
Andrew, we heard President Trump there describing these attacks as a spectacular military success. Can we confirm that? What do we know about what's been hit and what effect those strikes have had on Iran's nuclear capabilities? Sure. Look, it's probably a little early for that. There are two things to consider in terms of whether or not it was a success. One, of course, the U.S. stealth bombers made it to Iran, dropped their payloads and got out. And the president probably has good
good knowledge of whether or not the bombs hit their target as planned. And he's already said that the planes got out without incident. In that respect, it's clearly a success. In terms of how much damage it's done to Iran's nuclear program, that's actually really hard to tell. The target they focused on, Fordow, is a uranium enrichment plant buried under a mountain. So it's not visible. They used weapons that are designed to penetrate deep into the earth and then explode. So by their nature,
they create damage that you're not going to see right away. And they did this in the dark of night, of course. So now that it's daylight again and people have access to the site and satellites are going, et cetera, determining the level of damage is going to be a real focus.
Right. We've heard from the IAEA and Iran that there's been no radioactive fallout. So I guess just in a narrow sense there, that is good news. But in terms of the damage, you mentioned the strikes on Fordow. This is Iran's sort of primary nuclear site, kind of considered the crown jewel of their nuclear ambitions. I guess any damage there, considering its location deep underground, would be a success.
Yeah, there was an expectation that this one would be very hard to take out. It was built purposefully by the Iranians to be hard to attack from the air. Israel, in their week-long campaign against the Iranian air defense, Iranian military leadership, against other nuclear sites, had left this one alone because it doesn't really have the tools to easily address it the way the U.S. does.
Those tools, Andrew, being these bunker buster bombs that we had sort of been talking about in the preceding days. That's correct. Yeah, they're called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. They're 30,000 pounds. Gravity bombs dropped from airplanes. An interesting fact is that they've never been used in war. So the U.S. developed these things over the past couple of decades with targets like Fordo specifically in mind. But there's no empirical evidence yet as to how they perform in an actual battle situation.
Do we have a sense about next steps here? Is the U.S. done? Yeah, President Trump is signaling that he's willing for this to be a one and done as long as Iran comes to the negotiating table. He's warning that if not, then the U.S. will continue to attack and attack a wider range of targets. So the ball's really in Iran's court at this point. There's also the question of whether the facility was actually damaged. And if so, then it's kind of easy for the parties to declare mission accomplished.
On quite the ultimatum there, the ball in Iran's court, as you mentioned, how are they responding both in words and actions so far? As you can expect, Iran's responding angrily. They've argued that this is a violation of international law, that it's a violation of agreements around peaceful development of nuclear weapons. They've disputed that they were actually trying to
develop or develop the option for a nuclear weapon, as others have argued. So there's quite a bit of rhetorical anger coming out. They also launched another barrage of missiles at Israel. It wasn't particularly large or particularly remarkable. And I think the feeling, particularly around the Persian Gulf states, is that there's likely to be more to come. And Iran has a lot of options there. They can try and interrupt oil supplies. They have militias that could attack American forces. Iran itself could try and attack American forces. There are a lot of
troops and bases scattered around the region. So I think basically people are braced, waiting to see what happens. Yeah, we've heard from Iran's foreign minister basically saying we reserve all options when it comes to defending ourselves. So, Andrew, I imagine the alert here has been raised far and wide. Yeah, that's accurate. But Iran also has a difficult line to walk here because depending on what they hit and how they hit it,
it, they expose themselves to a greater degree of retaliation and response. And it's at a point when Israel has significantly degraded their air defenses and is able to kind of fly around the country's skies at will. So Iran is quite vulnerable at this point. They're not troops on the ground or anything like that, so they can continue to try and hold out, but they aren't really in a position to protect themselves very much from airstrikes.
We've got to take a very short break, but when we come back, we'll look at how these U.S. strikes are going over in Washington and consider the potential regional implications of a continued escalation. Stay with us. Isn't home where we all want to be? Reba here for Realtor.com, the pro's number one most trusted app. Finding a home is like dating. You're searching for the one. With over 500,000 new listings every month, you can find the one today.
Download the Realtor.com app because you're nearly home. Make it real with Realtor.com. Pro's number one most trusted app based on August 2024 proprietary survey. Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings. February 2024 through January 2025. ♪
Andrew, before the break, we were discussing the difficult line Iran may need to walk here. Let's look to Washington. We heard overnight from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill supporting the president by and large, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he doesn't believe this is the start of a forever war, that there aren't going to be American boots on the ground here. The House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, saying he believes the president
doesn't need Congress's approval to carry out these strikes. Though there hasn't been complete unanimity on this point, we've seen some pushback from lawmakers, including a call for a war powers vote that would constrain further U.S. action. And at least one prominent supporter of the president has come out and basically said this is the U.S. yet again finding itself unable to avoid getting involved in conflicts overseas. This is not our fight, the words of Marjorie Taylor Greene overnight.
So, Andrew, maybe this is just a one and done batch of attacks from the U.S. And yet there are certainly voices raising concerns about potentially getting bogged down. It's true. And this particular action implicates a lot of different strains in American politics and even just within the Republican Party itself. I mean, even inside the party, you've got these twin stories.
One being kind of more traditional conservative, maybe even neoconservative, very opposed to Iran, very pro-Israel, very ready to intervene when they see threats. And then you have another more isolationist wing that's kind of tired of fighting overseas and thinks the U.S. is getting involved in fights that it doesn't need to be involved in and draining blood and treasure as a result.
Trump is obviously trying to split the difference. They did a lot of work ahead of this, trying to prepare the ground and explain why the president was getting involved. And a lot of the signaling, which is going on privately as well as public about the U.S. being ready to stand down after this strike as long as Iran comes to the table, is
is aimed not just at Iran and trying to get to a solution in the war, but also at his base to show that he's not pursuing expansive goals to involve regime change and maybe trying to reshape the region. Would it be fair to say there are somewhat similar debates playing out in Iran over the country's
foreign policy, the pros and cons of continuing to saber rattle? It's so hard to tell what's going on in Iran. Decisions are made largely in secret by a small group of people. And even now it's become even more complicated because they've shut the internet for several days. It's hard to reach people. In the leadership, you definitely have different strains, ones that are more interested in improving terms with the West to the degree that they can get sanctions relief and focus on the economy, which is
really at a crisis and causing its own significant problems for the regime. And then you have a more hardline group that wants to confront the U.S., wants to confront Israel, and probably sees this as a moment. So people are kind of caught in the middle. There's not a ton of support for the regime. At the same time, there's probably also not a ton of support for having foreign powers address the issue on their behalf. So it's complicated.
And complicating things further here are just how many countries play a role in all of this. The leader of one of them overnight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had the following to say about President Trump. His leadership today has created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace. President Trump and I often say, peace through strength. First comes strength,
Then comes peace. And tonight, President Trump and the United States acted with a lot of strength. What do you make of that, Andrew? That's quite an optimistic outlook for what could come of this latest escalation.
Yeah, look, that quote is interesting. Israel's coming off kind of one of the worst moments in its history with the October 7th, 2023 attacks, where it was surprised and hit badly by Hamas and Hamas-led militants. And in the past year or so, it has more or less run the table with its enemies from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and now Iran. You can understand that sense of optimism and almost even elation in Netanyahu's comments. On the other hand,
That sort of discussion about making history and changing things forever and changing the face of the region are really troubling
to other countries in the region, particularly Gulf Arab states who have seen this movie before with the attempt to remake Iraq, have seen the chaos that resulted from that, and who this time are sitting really within 100 miles of the country that is being attacked. And so you've got a region that, particularly in the Gulf, is trying to pivot to developing their economies, getting past a lot of these conflicts, and now they've had another one brought to their doorstep.
Indeed, they have. Finally, Andrew, what should we be watching for next? Is it more diplomacy? What's on your radar in the coming days? I think we're looking first for a damage assessment to see whether or not the nuclear program was actually set back. The fear or the expectation is that now that Israel and the U.S. have attacked Iran, that it creates strong incentives for Iran to race for a nuclear weapon. And that risk becomes greater if the attacks have not done enough damage to their program.
The other important thing to look for is any signs that the diplomatic track starts to work. Iran has been very defiant to this point. It's under a lot of pressure, not only from the US, but also from Europe and from Arab states to begin to engage more and to begin to offer greater concessions around its nuclear program.
It's interesting, the position of the Gulf, because they're not, you know, to a degree, they're rivals of Iran's. They've suffered from Iran's destabilizing effects in the region, and they are to some degree at risk from their nuclear program and from other activities. And they've been making steps to make accommodations with Israel and, of course, have improved their relations with the United States.
But they're not interested in being caught in the middle, and they're very concerned about a conflict that widens and makes it harder for them to develop their economies and maybe even threatens things like their desalination on the Persian Gulf. So they have a lot at stake, and there's a lot of pressure building regionally on Iran. Andrew Dowell is The Wall Street Journal's Middle East Bureau Chief. Andrew, thank you so much for bringing us up to speed. Thanks. Good to be here.
And that's it for What's News Sunday for June 22nd. Today's show was produced by Charlotte Gartenberg with supervising producer Sandra Kilhoff and deputy editor Chris Zinsley. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. For continuing updates on this story, head to WSJ.com. Otherwise, we'll see you back here tomorrow morning with a brand new show. As always, thanks for listening.
Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, cultural enrichment, and all-inclusive fares. Discover more at viking.com.