Assessing the Damage to the Iranian Nuclear Program
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The 12th day, Israel, Iran war may be over, but not the war over the results of the U.S. strike on the Iranian nuclear program. How much has the nuclear program been damaged and what comes next as Iran and the U.S. prepare for some negotiations over how to strike Iran?

a peace agreement. Also, NATO agrees to Donald Trump's demand that the allies spend 5% of their gross domestic product on defense. How did that happen? Okay, welcome to Potomac Watch. I'm Paul G. Goh of the Wall Street Journal Opinion page, and I'm here with Kate Batchelder-Odell and

Elliot Kaufman, welcome to you both. So it's been a big two weeks for American foreign policy and the Trump presidency. First, let's talk about the debate over the battle damage assessment at Iran's nuclear sites. Three of them were struck, of course, on Saturday by U.S. bombs and cruise missiles. But the leak of a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment said the program has only been set back by a few months after

But that report was with low confidence, quote unquote, as the intelligence service said, and was preliminary. But the media have been playing it up in a very big way to suggest that the strikes were not a military success. And the Trump administration pushing back very hard. Let's listen to Defense Secretary Pete Hayseth.

today at the Pentagon. And when you leak a portion of an intelligence assessment, but just a little portion, just the little portion that makes it seem like maybe the strike wasn't effective, then you start a news cycle, whether it's The Washington Post or Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, you start a news cycle that starts to call into question the ethics. No, that's why. So

So you bring the chairman here who's not involved in politics. He didn't do politics. That's my lane to understand and translate and talk about those types of things. So I can use the word obliterated. He could use defeat, destroy, assess, all of those things. But ultimately, we're here to clarify what these weapons are capable of, which anyone with two eyes, some ears and a brain can recognize that kind of firepower with that specificity at that location and others is going to have a devastating effect.

Well, the chairman he's referring to is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, who was also at the press conference. So, Elliot, the

Who's right in this debate over the battle damage assessment? Well, first of all, I think you're seeing exactly why Pete Hegseth was picked for that job, because he can go like that and take it to the press. Other questions exist, but on that one, there's no doubt. He's a pro on that score. That's right. So now we have this argument about

and it is between U.S. intelligence agencies. You have the DIA disagreeing with the CIA on this. You have the IAEA disagreeing with Iran on this. Iranian officials themselves disagreeing. And then, of course, you have Israeli intelligence versus American intelligence writ large. And so it's very fascinating to see how the...

conversation about this has balkanized and has been politicized so much and so quickly with everyone choosing their own preferred source of information. And I would note that the same people who before a U.S. strike

assured us that, in fact, Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon and that that was just Trump administration spin in some way. President Trump's spin specifically now tell us that, no, no, Iran is very close. It hasn't been affected even by major destruction to nuclear enrichment sites, weaponization sites.

and nuclear scientists as well. So the IAEA being the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have been longtime analysts of the nuclear program in Iran and visit the sites there as well. Yeah, they actually just came out with

a new statement saying that the centrifuges at Fordow have been eliminated, destroyed. So before we get into the politics of this, Kate, I want to elaborate a little bit more on the actual substance of the debate. We published an analysis by David Albright and Spencer Faragasso of the Institute for Science and International Security with their assessment of the

I've been following David Albright on the Iranian nuclear program for decades, and he's a very careful analyst. He tells it straight, in my experience, good or bad, no matter what the truth is, as he sees it. And I think it's significant that in the excerpts of their analysis that we published, he basically said that the attacks have effectively destroyed Iran's program. And he goes through that.

chapter and verse on the three sites that were struck, Forto, Natanz, I guess, and Ifsahan. When you read through the Albright assessment, the words I frequently wrote down are massive damage, significant damage, likely severely damaged or destroyed. Those are used multiple times throughout the report. And he also makes good distinctions. You know, we're talking about

damaging things that Iran uses to make uranium, to enrich the uranium. And then we're talking about damaging things that Iran uses to make the nuclear weapon itself. And then a separate category being the intellectual firepower Iran uses in taking out some of their more experienced nuclear scientists.

So I think he went through in pretty good detail about how those have been set back. When we talk about how far they've been set back, these require assumptions. These are estimates that we have. And going through battle damage comes from a multitude of sources, signals intelligence, other types of intelligence that come together to try to get a picture and make an assessment.

But the strikes as a military success seems unambiguous to me. And I tend to think that the Trump administration has a point that we are entering day three of a very non-edifying discourse over what the word obliterate means. Yeah, that's an important point. We are going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about where the diplomacy between the United States and Iran goes next. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America.

And Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co/americaninnovation.

Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch, and I'm here with Kate O'Dell and Elliot Kaufman. Trump, of course, has a history, a penchant for overselling, for adjectival excess. And, you know, the word obliterate, the press is kind of

Jumping at that and saying, well, wait a minute. It's not obliterated, but severely damaged, set back, effectively destroyed. What's the distinction there? I want to make one other point from the Albright Report, which I think is significant. It points out that the attack on the Arak, A-R-A-K, heavy water reactor, has likely destroyed the reactor, eliminating a potential future source of plutonium that

that could be used in nuclear weapons. This is significant. This was not struck by the United States. This was struck by Israel. That's significant because while it hasn't received a lot of attention, the North Koreans have been able to create a bomb with plutonium. So this was another potential risk, Elliot. Yep. And closes off another...

potential pathway. And so anytime you can do that, I think it's highly significant. And talking to American sources, including senior White House official, Israeli sources, senior officials there, you don't hear talk about months. You hear talk about years, two years and so forth. But I think it's also important to recognize what that means.

It means two years if Iran could act unilaterally

unimpeded, rebuild everything unimpeded. And I think it's highly important on that score that President Trump, when asked, would you stop Iran, bomb it once again if it tried rebuilding all of this? He said, sure. And I think he should say that again and even more clearly. Yeah. The debate over the political narrative here is part of this. The Trump administration pushing back so hard

And as it is often does trying to hit back in particular at the press. Let's listen to Pete Hegseth again, go after the media. Because you and I mean, specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard. It's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad that

You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective. Maybe the way the Trump administration has represented them isn't true. So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it. Spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots are

were successful. Well, that's the equivalent of dropping a 30,000-pound bomb on the press corps, Kate. I mean, I think it's overkill. I mean, what The Times and the CNN did was report it was a story. Did they hype the story, overplay it because it was such a low-confidence report, a preliminary report, the DIA leak, incomplete information? We have 17 intelligence agencies, I think the last count. DIA is just one of them. And so it was a snippet. It was preliminary.

The press did run with it too much. There's no question about it. On the other hand, was it a story? Yeah, I think it was probably a story that should have been reported. One other thing that hasn't gotten a lot of attention, a little bit, is whether or not Iran was able to steal away

before the bombings, some enriched uranium. And there's still a question outstanding about whether that happened. There is, right? There's been a lot of discussion over these trucks that mysteriously appeared outside of the site. Though an interesting little tidbit from the Albright assessment was that he found intriguing a possible alternative explanation, which was that the regime had instead

put things in Fordow thinking that it was more impenetrable than the rest of it, the targets that the Israelis were going after and that maybe the Americans wouldn't strike it. So,

So again, it is something of a semantic debate about whether did Iran retain anything at all that they could someday use to try to restart this program? I think the answer to that is yes, but it's not an argument for doing nothing. And it's certainly not an argument that the B-2 strikes were unsuccessful. The one quick thing I'd add to from this press conference, clearly the Trump administration is relishing this fight with the media a little bit, even though they're complaining about it. But I thought the one thing that really was a public service from the Pentagon perspective

press conference was talking about the Americans in nondescript agencies like the Defense Threat Reduction Agency who have been watching Fordow for 15 years, who have been looking exactly what's going on there. What are the Iranians building? What are they putting under there? What are the electrical systems look like?

and have been doing that to no public acclaim, to develop a weapon so the United States could have an ability to conduct this strike. So it's just a testament to how much work every day it takes to protect the United States. And I thought that was valuable in this larger media fight. Brett McGurk, an official not in government but had served across multiple administrations, has made the point that this strike scenario was being planned for a very long time.

And what's really interesting is the B-2 holes that you can see from the air where the bombs entered, not the B-2 holes, but the 30,000-pound bound holes, seemed to be – was asserted by the administration to be exactly where they had targeted the bombs.

where they needed to be for maximum impact. Well, the president said at the NATO conference, I think he was referring narrowly to Tomahawk missiles, but said that everything came within nine inches of its target from being shot 400 miles away. I mean, that's a pretty stunning success. One point I've been making is too, that the bomber force and its ability to generate power like this is a really valuable asset for the United States. One of my longer concerns about this rah-rah moment we're having about how much of a military power we are is that

we are relying on 19 B-2 bombers to conduct these strikes. I don't think we've ever had as many airborne as we did in this strike, and we'd struggle to do it for days and days over and over again. So I view this as a real teaching moment about the enduring value of the U.S. military, but also just the changing nature of some of the threats we're going to have to face and the mix of stuff we'll need to deal with it. Yeah, when I was writing about

The B-2 development way back when, the controversy over developing it because it became very costly. The big selling points for the B-2 were stealth, but also big payload. You can carry some real dangerous weapons and also long range. You can travel a long way. And all of those were on display.

in this mission. Elliot, as we go from here, Steve Witkoff, the president's negotiator, may be going to the Middle East to meet with the Iranians as early as next week. What's on his agenda? Well, he wants to come to a deal. And I think he will probably need more backing on this from President Trump than he has had so far. Because President Trump asked about it, didn't seem so sure that he needs support

But if we're looking forward, whatever nuclear material was not hit got away. America has an interest in wrapping that up, in having IAEA inspectors on the ground verifying its weapons.

removal or its elimination. That's number one. Moving forward, you have other objectives in terms of changing the Iranian regime's capabilities, missile capabilities. Does it need to be able to have the largest mid-range, long-range ballistic missile program in the region so that it can menace countries so far away from it? And then also its intentions.

Does it mean to continue a forever war against the U.S., against Israel? Does it need to continue funding proxy armies in all of these Arab countries in between Iran and Israel? All of these are on the table. And there is an opportunity here to convert some of the military achievements into more lasting political gains.

I think that's what Witkoff is looking for. Yeah, your point about the president, he says kind of ambivalent things saying, well, we don't need to worry about the Iranian nuclear program anymore. We've taken care of that. Well, actually, we have done substantial damage to it. But going forward, you don't want it to be reconstituted. You want to get whatever uranium enriched material or other things that have escaped destruction. And that's why you need the inspectors. And that's a crucial point. The inspectors need to be in there.

And there's been a lot of talk in the parliament saying, no, we're not going to let the inspectors in. So that's got to be a crucial point. The other one is this point about intention, which is, will the Iranian regime say, we no longer want to wipe Israel off the face of the map? Are we willing to say Israel has a right to exist? Because...

What Israel feared, and certainly what we feared, was that they were building a nuclear weapon to wipe it off the face of the earth, as they had said they want to do. So will Iran commit to that? That seems to me a test, one test of whether or not this episode, this 12-day war, has really made an impact on Iran, Elliot. And those tests...

can provide Trump with useful information. If Iran will not allow international inspectors in, right off the bat, it has no intention of coming clean on the rest of its nuclear material infrastructure. It still wants to keep those options open. If that's so, he should know that because it should inform everything he does next.

afterwards in trying to not only win this war, but also win the peace that has followed it. And that includes whether or not he should be willing to lift sanctions, economic sanctions, which of course is the top priority now of the Iranian government, get those ease so it can sell more oil and make more money to run itself and maybe reconstitute if it wants to.

a military capability. We are going to take another break. And when we come back, we'll talk about our next subject, which is what happened at the NATO summit that concluded this week when the allies agreed to spend 5% of their economies on defense when we come back.

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Welcome back. I'm Paul G. Goh here on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages. And I am here with Elliot Kaufman and Kate O'Dell. Kate, let's turn to our other subject, which is the NATO summit this week in The Hague.

Donald Trump, for the first time after NATO summit, in my experience, left in a good mood. Usually he's grousing about what happened at NATO and criticizing NATO, but this time he praised the alliance, said it was a great meeting. Obviously, the big reason is because the allies agreed to what Trump had demanded, which is a target of 5% of GDP on defense by the date of 2035. That's up from 2% now.

And the remarkable thing is that there really wasn't all that much disagreement on the point. So even though getting there from 2% or in some cases more than that now, but getting to 5% wasn't

will not be easy. No, it won't. I mean, look, I think Trump does deserve some credit for this, but I would argue too that there were two factors that really drove this real sea change. One of them was Trump and his encouragement or demands that Europe spend more, and the other was Putin and the reality of war on the European continent starting to wake up some of these countries.

So it's 5% overall target by 2035. And really 3.5% of that will be dedicated to core military spending on tanks and hardware. The other percentage points can be counted with more peripheral defense investment. But that's a big deal. I mean, we've been writing editorials about NATO going to 3% for

many years now. And it was often viewed as unachievable as just something that would never happen in Europe. And so I think it is a big deal. But Spain and some other countries, Spain is at 1.2%, I think, and is really trying to duck having to go to an actual 3.5% target and is

basically saying, we'll get back to you. Let's review these targets again, maybe a few years down the road. But just to underscore the shift on the continent, I think the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, when he was a Dutch Prime Minister, he was not a big defense vendor, was not awake to some of these threats necessarily. And now he is out there talking, saying, my job is to make sure that we don't all end up taking Russian language courses. That's a direct question.

I mean, so I think he's a great example of just how serious Europe has started to take the threat that Putin is posing in Ukraine, but also the awakening from perhaps more mercurial ally across the Atlantic. And Friedrich Merz, the new chancellor of Germany, has put in a deal with the new coalition government.

That will take the defense spending up to 3.5% of GDP for Germany, for heaven's sake. You know, the longtime Lagerd. And I would point out that let's assume Germany gets to 3.5%. That's a big economy. So they can deliver quite a bit of power with that.

And a big chunk of that they would send, I think about $8 billion or so, would be for aid to Ukraine. So that's a significant amount. But also the 3.5% figure, you know what, who's going to have to struggle to get there?

the old U.S. of A, because we don't spend that right now. Even with the $150 billion increase that's in this budget reconciliation bill, Kate, it's not there yet. And President Trump's budget proposal, which is separate from the reconciliation, but his proposal for going forward, freezes essentially spending money

at current levels, defense spending. So President Trump has some work to do to meet his own target. He does. I mean, a real natural position for Trump, I think now would be, look, huge success in Europe, finally have the Europeans taking it seriously. And now that I don't think NATO is a ripoff anymore, the United States is going to throw in and continue to be the leader of the alliance that it has been, you know, since it began. So I think

Right now, there is an ideological discussion within his administration about the defense budget. And right now, the elements, the fiscal hawks in the White House, as well as the foreign policy, quote, restrainers, those who want to do less in the world, are prevailing. They are proposing a defense budget that is essentially flat and

and they've put a bunch of potholes in it that they're going to fill with a reconciliation bill. That reconciliation bill, that budget bill was supposed to be a big boost for defense. It was supposed to be the start of a buildup. And instead, it looks like it's just going to be a two-part defense budget that is on track closer to with what President Biden had in mind. So the details are few, but right now what I hear on the Hill is that the White House is saying the defense budget is going to hold. And so if it holds, it's going to go down significantly.

even below 3% potentially, which Pete's Hegseth had said in his confirmation was very dangerous. So I'm hopeful that President Trump, I think, will get more plugged into this debate because it really is about the ideological direction of his administration and whether he is going to take after that Reagan peace through strength buildup that he ran on. And takes credit for, right? He likes to say that we have the greatest military in the history of mankind.

Well, you're going to have to spend some money to do it, particularly given all of the advances in the military technology and software.

that are waiting to be exploited and with unmanned drones, which we need in the tens of thousands, and unmanned aircraft, which we also need. So all of those developments need to be funded if we are going to meet the dangers in the current world. All right, I'm going to leave it there for today. Thank you, Kate O'Dell, and thank you, Elliot Kaufman, here in the studio with me. We appreciate everybody listening on Potomac Watch. We're here every day. See you tomorrow.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.