Trump Declares a Cease-Fire in the '12-Day War' Between Israel and Iran
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President Trump announces a ceasefire between Israel and Iran in what he is now calling the 12-day war. But will it hold? And how confident are we that the U.S. bunker busters obliterated Iran's nuclear program, as the Trump administration says? Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, editorial board members Elliot Kaufman and Cade Batchelder-Odell.

On Monday evening in the U.S., here was the social media post from real Donald Trump, as he is known on the Internet. Quote,

for 12 hours, at which point the war will be considered ended. He went on to add, I would like to congratulate both countries, Israel and Iran, on having the stamina, courage, and intelligence to end what should be called the 12-day war, unquote. But Tuesday morning in the Middle East, there was a late exchange of fire between these two countries. Here's President Trump on the White House lawn earlier today.

Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before. The biggest load that we've seen. I'm not happy with Israel. You know, when I say, OK, now you have 12 hours, you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran either. But I'm really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land,

I'm not happy about that. Elliot, what's the latest in this exchange of fire? Each side, I think, seeming to say that they were not breaching the ceasefire terms. But notable, President Trump putting a lot of the pressure on Israel there. That's right. So after the ceasefire announcement, you have us as typical in these Middle East battles, both sides trying to get their licks in and on a strong note, let the other side's population know that it was they who lost.

And so Israel, heavy bombing in Tehran, attacking the regime's instruments of repression, paramilitary thugs, IRGC's internal security apparatus, that sort of thing. Iran fired off, I believe it's seven missile salvos, each of them fairly small, but still seven, one of which got through, hit a residential building and killed four Israelis.

including actually the first Israeli soldier killed in this war by Iran. He was off duty at his mother's home, which is why he was in danger because Iran was shooting at civilians.

So all that happens before the ceasefire goes into effect. Then once that happens, at 7 a.m. Israeli time, about five minutes afterward, you get one Iranian ballistic missile fired. And then three hours after that, you get a couple more Iranian missiles fired. Now, these ones are either shot down or land harmlessly, but they're, you know, a

a violation of the ceasefire terms. That's certainly not the way that Israel wants to start what Trump has portrayed as sort of the first day of the rest of their lives. And so Israel was ready to strike back hard, although I have some skepticism about that, given that Israel waited

on that, waited several hours for the president to get up in the morning and tell them not to. I think he said so much more forcefully than Israel expected, but they may have anticipated that they were going to be told, tone it down, which they did. And after one sort of symbolic strike on an Iranian radar installation, we call it symbolic now, but if this had happened a month ago, it would have been major news.

It seems that both sides have now quieted down. The ceasefire has passed its first test, we can say. Let's close the loop also on the Iranian response to the U.S. bunker buster bombs that were dropped over the weekend. Kate, on Monday, Iran fired 14 missiles toward a U.S. base in Qatar. Thirteen of those missiles were intercepted. One was apparently allowed to land. President Trump said it was headed in a non-threatening direction.

And so no casualties or damage reported on that. Interesting, 14 seems to be the number of bunker buster bombs that the U.S. dropped on these Iranian nuclear sites. So that is the reason that 14 missiles were launched in response. But speaking of symbolic, I mean, is the only way to read that as

an attempt by Iran to do something rather than nothing, but to kind of back down here in response to 14 big bombs that landed and caused damage. It sent 14 missiles that were intercepted. It does look like it was a perfunctory attempt to register its displeasure and play to a domestic audience that it had done something in response to the United States. Now, things can always change, but those of us who thought

that sending the B-2 bombers to eliminate Fordow was a calculated risk that the United States could manage, had argued that this was the kind of response that the Iranian regime was likely to do if the United States were to strike. And that is based on, you know, our empirical dealings with the Iranians. I mean, if you go back to the strike we've been talking about on Soleimani,

In 2020, when Trump took him out, there was the same debate where it was a worry that the Iranians were going to start an all-out war in the Middle East, and it didn't materialize. So I think this response from the Iranians is consistent with what we expected. And now I think to Elliot's describing that the ceasefire is, of course, fragile, but so far, I mean, it looks like an unmitigated victory for President Trump in the United States. And

a big step toward accomplishing a non-nuclear Iran defense. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. 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.

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Welcome back. Elliot, what are the analysts saying about the assessments of the U.S. strikes, the likelihood that these enrichment facilities and other nuclear program facilities were significantly damaged or destroyed, and also the point about whether Iran may have others that are hiding somewhere, whether it may have been able to move some of its highly enriched uranium to locations that were not hit by these U.S. strikes?

Well, that's the key question here. And it is very difficult to know exactly

Intelligence agencies have assessments, but even there, there is some room for doubt. However, if you look at strong analysts who have a good track record of skepticism, for instance, David Albright, veteran nuclear monitor, assesses that Israel and the U.S. have effectively destroyed Iran's centrifuge infrastructure.

enrichment program. And he can say that because he looks at satellite imagery and sees that, for instance, American bombs were dropped with incredible accuracy in very specific spots of the Fordow Mountains, right over a ventilation shaft to fall through and then

actually hit centrifuge halls and have an explosion such that Iran's centrifuges are destroyed or buried underneath there. At two other sites, Natanz and also Isfahan, we can say with some confidence that they were seriously damaged. And that means centrifuges, that means sites that are

for weaponization of highly enriched uranium. About nuclear material itself, that highly enriched uranium, there are some outstanding concerns about a stockpile that was held, we think, in tunnels near the

underground Isfahan complex. Now, American Tomahawk missiles struck at the entrances to those tunnels. So what that means is the highly enriched uranium there could be destroyed. It could be entombed temporarily, permanently. We just don't know. And it's very difficult to know

until somebody actually goes down there. There is also worry that some nuclear material had been moved before Israeli strikes or before American strikes. There had been some stories about that, which I think have been exaggerated. And from what we hear about U.S. intelligence from U.S. senators with access to it, it seems that

we believe mostly it wasn't moved and is buried deep underground by the bombs. And so we're looking at, if that holds true, we're looking at really a generational success for Israel, surely a massive accomplishment for the U.S. Nothing is set back forever.

But Iran also knows that maybe this could be done once again. And so, like I said, major, major accomplishments on that scale, which is part of what allowed Trump to end the war. Okay. Part of the reason that the answer to that question matters is you're hearing speculation that in the wake of these strikes, Iran may try to sprint back.

to a bomb if there is some stockpile somewhere of highly enriched uranium that is still accessible to it? And one of the answers to that question is, well, Israel also took out top nuclear scientists, people who may have been working on the program of converting that into an actual usable weapon. But the other thing that I think is interesting to think about here is just how that would have affected the

the U.S. calculus, President Trump's decision to send the B-2s in the first place. Because I guess you can make a pretty strong argument that as soon as Netanyahu and Israel decided to take the step of trying to eliminate the nuclear program, then Iran was always going to try to sprint to a bomb. And so the calculation for the United States and President Trump was,

Whether to try to take out Fordow and make that sprint as hard, as difficult, as impossible, as lengthy as the U.S. possibly could with these bunker buster bombs and whether to try to help end the nuclear program for good or whether to leave the Israelis to their own devices.

And so the question of trying to sprint to a bomb is an interesting one. But from the American perspective, the perspective inside the White House, the fact that Israel had already gone after the nuclear program in such a significant way, I think is a big part of the decision ultimately made by the president. I think if we're going to do a battle damage tally here, I think it might be helpful to take a step back and think about a huge element of what was accomplished here was the

America telling both its friends, its allies, and its adversaries that sometimes it really does enforce its own red lines, that sometimes 60 days to negotiate really means 60 days.

And it was starting to undo some of the real blows to American prestige and credibility, for instance, in Afghanistan, when we ducked out of there in a mess in 2021. And so I really think the decision to strike needs to be viewed in that larger lens has to make sense.

a Chinese Communist Party think twice about provoking a crisis on Taiwan, for instance. I do think it even could be helpful in scrambling the very stalled negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, to have a president who is willing to enforce red lines, who is not

terrified out of doing anything because of escalation risks like the Biden administration was to demonstrate even that the United States will not be cowed out of doing anything at all just because it made mistakes in the Middle East in the 2000s and in Iraq. Even getting away from what was accomplished on the Iranian nuclear program, I think,

this is a big moment for America's credibility in the world that hopefully will be very helpful in other regions. On the particulars of sprint to a bomb, I mean, around the argument on the Iranian nuclear program, you hear a lot on the left that you can't destroy an idea. You're not going to keep them from getting this technology that's now 80 years old. And this is sometimes often used as an argument not to do anything at all about it and that we just all have to be hostage to the idea that this

religiously fanatical regime might get a nuclear weapon. And so I think the focus here should be on a huge setback to that goal. And could Iran try again? Could they try to put these pieces back together? Did they sneak any of that material out? Maybe we will learn that they will try to do that. However, the point of the strike is to try to show the regime that the cost of that will be too high.

and that they should not try again because they will continue to have it removed by military means. And so I think the specifics here on what exactly we're taking out sometimes miss this larger picture of a commander in chief who enforced a red line and also of a pretty powerful message to Iran that its nuclear ambitions really are over, even if they continue to try to scramble back. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

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Welcome back. Eli, you mentioned the possibility of a message to Iran that if it tries to reconstitute a nuclear program, it doesn't give up on these ambitions to get a bomb, that Israel could strike the next Fordow site or the next Natanz site. Do you think that is the posture that the Israeli government is going to be taking going forward? And how does that fit into Trump's message of ceasefire and ending of the war? I think that is...

Israel's posture. And it's even more than that, actually. It also has to do with Iran's missile program. It has to do with Iran's proxy armies. After October 7th, 2023, Israelis have been united on the point that they're not going to let themselves get put into this position again. They're

They simply won't. And so when you look at an adversary like this Iranian regime, which I don't think anyone in Israel thinks is capable of changing its mind about Israel or abandoning that decades-long war...

against it, allowing it to get back so close to nuclear weapons. It seems crazy. I mean, it seems crazy that it got this far, which is why it was a central issue in Israeli politics for many years.

And, you know, there was always a good reason not to attack. Certainly, American presidents had other priorities, thought that negotiations would work. This American president thought that negotiations would work or at least was willing to give them a strong try. But he also set a deadline on it.

And Israel enforced that. But you raise a very good point. Trump is talking about peace and harmony right now. Will he be upset with Israel if it breaks that vision? I guess what I would say is that Israel has to make the case change.

to him that it won't be Israel's fault, it will be Iran's fault. If Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons once again, a massive missile program once again, the largest in the region, trying to seed war through proxies in six or seven different countries in the region, that's not peace and harmony.

And while Trump says Iran will never again build its nuclear program, I think there's an unstated corollary there and it will never again do that if it is confident that Israel or the U.S. will destroy it once again and swiftly.

And if doubt is allowed to creep in there that, no, Israel won't really do it because Trump won't like that and the U.S. will stop Israel from doing it, well, Iran is committed to Israel's annihilation. So you could see it try once again.

maybe it will get lucky next time. And so the U.S. has to put an end to those sorts of foolish thoughts, really. And Trump can, but he needs to look beyond immediate peace and harmony, especially when that isn't what this Iranian regime is focused on. Okay. What about the U.S. stance here? The public reporting is that the Pentagon had at least 20

of these 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, the massive Ordnance Penetrator. And here we've dropped 14 of them in one go on these Iranian nuclear sites. Is that something that should be on the Pentagon's next shopping list? Or maybe there is a larger inventory than is publicly available? Well, I think there are actually a couple of lessons about military power from this strike.

In talking to folks I've been thinking about, you know, I think most Americans were amazed at the ability of the United States to launch these B-2 bombers, fly all the way there, not be detected. Nobody shot at them on the way in. Nobody shot at them on the way out. No loss of American life. So I think there's been some marveling at that correctly. But this is, I think, one, a reminder that some of the United States' very high-end, expensive assets are

still really matter in the world and in warfare. A lot of the defense conversation right now evolves around making U.S. spy cheaper things and defend against lower-end threats, and some of that is really warranted. But this is an arresting reminder that having a strategic bomber force is really valuable. And I'd add, too, the United States is down to something like 19 B-2 bombers. I mean, we originally...

plan to buy more than 100 and have ended up with less than 20. And so that is something that I think is worth bearing in mind, because we're in the middle of replacing our bomber force with the B-21, which is supposed to be, you know, a spectacular improvement in our bomber force. But right now, with the defense budgets that we have around 3% of our economy, the

half the 6% of the Cold War. We're not going to buy 100 of those like we should. And if we continue on that trend. So I think it's a reminder that these assets matter, that there's a reason that we have them and why we spend money on our defense. But then to get back to your point about the ordinance penetrators, the 14 that we used

was certainly higher than some of the spitballing estimates I had heard in advance of a strike, maybe in the single digits of those weapons. And so we did use a significant percentage of them. But it's just one more example in our kind of larger public conversation about how the United States needs deeper magazines, and it needs more weapons production. I mean, this conversation has

evolved around a lot on Ukraine, which is using voracious amounts of 155 millimeter artillery. And there's also, you know, this demand for potentially for preparing for any sort of deterring a conflict in the Pacific discussion of how we are really short hundreds and hundreds of long range anti-ship missiles.

And so this is an example of something that the United States doesn't use very often. It purchases in relatively low quantities. But the world environment has just changed so significantly. It is no longer the peaceful post-Cold War environment. And so I think we need to be

stocking weapons lockers appropriately to that threat. So those are just some of the immediate lessons. I think you will start to see more interest in expanding our arsenal of those bunker busters. Ellie, you get the last word today, but one other unknowable as we speculate about the future of the Middle East here is the strength internally of the

Iranian regime, not out of the question that the Iranian people could revolt and rise up. And a lot of times these authoritarian regimes look pretty strong until just about five minutes before they collapse.

One other policy lesson here that strikes me is there's been a lot of talk in recent days about whether Iran, in response to these strikes, might close the Strait of Hormuz. It is an outlet of the Persian Gulf. About 20% of the world's oil flows through there. It's kind of an upside-down U with Iranian soil on the north and the west and the east as these tankers are going around the bend there. Let's listen to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Iran.

face the nation on Sunday talking about this. Well, I'm not going to take options away from the president. That's not something we're talking about right now in terms of being immediate. But if they do that, the first people that should be angry about it are the Chinese government because they take a lot of their oil comes through there. So they should be the first ones that are saying if they mine the Straits of Hormuz, the Chinese are going to pay a huge price and every other country in the world is going to pay a huge price. We will, too. It'll have some impact on us. It'll have a lot more impact on the rest of the world.

a lot more impact on the rest of the world. There would be a suicidal move on their part because I think the whole world would come against them if they did that. Elliot, closing that straight would doubtless have an effect on oil prices, the oil markets, but not the way that the oil embargo in the 1970s did. And so the lesson always is the importance of the fracking revolution and U.S. energy independence provides a lot of

freedom of action to a president who is facing a foreign crisis like this. Yeah, absolutely right. And when Iran was thinking over its options, how to retaliate for those U.S. strikes, closing the Strait of Hormuz was high up on that list.

But I think ultimately Iran thought better of it for a few reasons. One is if it does it, that's the end of its Navy. It could also be an invitation for Israel to attack Iran's oil export facilities. I mean, if Iran is going to block oil for others, why should it still have those in Israel's calculus? And those are major, major risks for the country.

The other reason, though, why Iran didn't do that or any other serious retaliatory option is because, well, it was pretty weak at that point. Israel had hit it very hard. We talked about the nuclear program, but also Iran's missile program, the tire top of its military chain program.

of command, especially its missile program, Revolutionary Guard, a series of others as well. And given that Iran's missile salvos at Israel were already dwindling, I'm not sure under any scenario it could take on a new enemy, the world's largest superpower. And

what Iran thought of ultimately in the end is, do we want to risk our regime here? Because that was the question at that point. Israel had hit it very hard in a lot of ways, but it could still survive. Even President Trump, however, at that point,

was starting to say, well, regime change, maybe it isn't such a bad word. Israel had been, with its airstrikes, hinting at that sort of option. So that's past us now. But if you are the Iranian regime, whatever you may tell your own population about how you won this war and it was some massive victory, you know and your people know that you got humiliated

on the battlefield. Israel had air supremacy. Iran didn't even try to fight the IDF. All it could hope for was to hit some civilians here and there. I mean, Iran lost its most valuable assets in 12 days, a mere 12 days, and was not able to do serious damage in response. Certainly far less than Israel or the U.S. expected.

And I think it's that humiliation that creates a vulnerability for the regime more than anything else, because its ideology is sort of bankrupt. Most of the people there do not hold to that, certainly at

at this point, but it was strong and it was always seen to be strong. Well, that may no longer be the case. So we don't know by any means if it'll fall, but there's an opportunity for Iranian opposition forces or even inside the regime, pragmatic forces who think we could make a lot more money just off all the oil if we stopped going to war with everybody.

So there's an opportunity. Thank you, Elliot and Kate. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America.

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