Trump's Attack May Instead Spur Iran to Speedrun a Nuclear Weapon It Wasn't Building Previously

An extremely ironic outcome.

Bomb Squad

President Donald Trump is trying to derail Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions by bombing its known nuclear research facilities — but it turns out that's easier said than done.

US officials have trumpeted that the recent strikes obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment sites, but satellite images have cast doubt on that claim. And in any case, Trump's bombing campaign will most likely spur the country to abandon the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and kickstart a program to rapidly develop nuclear arms as a deterrence, even if that program wasn't in gear previously — a grimly ironic outcome of strikes meant to prevent exactly that.

"The [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] is not able to protect us," Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said at a Turkey conference in the wake of the strikes, as reported by CNN.

There could even be international ramifications, if other countries see what Iran is going through as well and come to believe that a nuclear weapon would safeguard them against outside attempts at regime change.

In any case, Iranian officials said they had evacuated the sites — Fordow, Esfahan and Natanz — that were bombed by America, pointing to the possibility that parts of the nuclear program have survived and have been moved to a secret location.

Strike That

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations body, is clamoring for peace, diplomacy and access to sites in order to assess damages and account for any stockpiles of uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons.

But events have rapidly barreled forward so fast that a visit from a bunch of United Nations eggheads seems pretty quaint at the moment.

On Monday afternoon, Iran launched missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military base in the Middle East — though all the missiles were intercepted, heading off a worse crisis.

The bombing salvo comes on the heels of an Israeli attack on an Iranian government prison, among other facilities.

"I call on all parties to exercise the utmost restraint, de-escalate, and return to the negotiating table," French President Emmanuel Macron posted on X. "This spiral of chaos must end."

With international tempers running hot, good luck to that.

More on nuclear weapons: Russian Nuclear Military Satellite Spinning Out of Control