By Peter Jones

June 26, 2025

The dust is still settling and much remains uncertain about the full impact of Donald Trump’s air strikes against Iranian nuclear targets last Saturday.

There is controversy over how much of Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed and whether they can rebuild it. We do not know if the fragile Israel-Iran ceasefire will hold and be translated into an actual agreement. What comes next, and who the “winners” and “losers” are in all this are interesting questions.

Whether the Iranian nuclear sites were destroyed or merely damaged, it does seem clear that they had moved some enriched uranium, and possibly key equipment (such as advanced centrifuges) before the bombing. How much of it, we do not know, but there is a basis to re-constitute the program, despite what President Trump may say. They have been set-back – but how much?

With competing intelligence assessments now having surfaced and Congress split along party lines following a briefing Thursday on the effectiveness of the strikes, there is, at this writing, no definitive answer to that question.

A ceasefire is, by definition, temporary. It either leads to a more permanent agreement to end the fighting, or it eventually breaks down. Diplomacy will be required. President Trump has signalled that he expects this to begin soon, at least between the US and Iran. The Iranian Supreme Leader is more cautious.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not enthusiastic for the US and Iran to talk (let us not forget, he began the bombing largely to disrupt US-Iranian diplomacy, as the threat of an imminent Iranian bomb was simply not present, despite his claims), but Netanyahu does not seem able to stop a resumption of diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.

Will that diplomacy succeed in halting Iran’s nuclear program?

A negative scenario holds that any basis of trust on which an agreement must be built, never strong between the two, has been decisively broken.

For the Iranians, Trump abandoned the last nuclear agreement, so how can he be trusted to hold to any new one he might sign? He promised two weeks of calm to allow diplomacy to succeed and then began bombing Iran a few days later.

On the US side, Iran has lied and cheated about its nuclear program for so long, how can any agreement be trusted? (Although it must be pointed out that the US intelligence community and the international inspectors did say that Iran was abiding by the 2015 agreement when Trump abandoned it in 2018.)

If an agreement cannot be reached, then presumably the process breaks down. Then what? A resumption of fighting would be the logical conclusion – but not so fast. Polling indicates that Americans are absolutely dead set against it. It is very interesting that polls in the immediate aftermath of the bombing showed a majority did not support it.

The American people do not want this to resume. Trump knows it — which is why he is so desperate to claim that the strikes were a complete success and no more are needed.

This is unusual in that polling immediately after a military intervention often shows a temporary “rally around the flag” bump, which then drops off. There was no such bump this time. The American people do not want this to resume. Trump knows it — which is why he is so desperate to claim that the strikes were a complete success and no more are needed.

The Iranians know it too. They may be tempted to simply fold their arms and refuse to make concessions, knowing that “or else” threats from Trump are probably hollow. Meanwhile, they can secretly reconstitute their nuclear program with what is left, and sprint to a bomb in the hope that achieving it would make anyone think twice before ever bombing them again.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the point this week in the New York Times that this is exactly the outcome the Biden administration feared when they did their analysis of what a bombing campaign would achieve.

But there are more positive scenarios under which a deal could be reached. Iran is in shambles. Sanctions and the regime’s own corruption and mismanagement have shattered the economy. For all its bluff and bluster, Iran showed itself to be militarily weak as the Israeli and US Air Forces simply cut through Iran’s air defences as though they were rotten Swiss cheese.

Iran’s political system faces a huge moment of truth as the Supreme Leader will have to be replaced sooner rather than later — only the second time this has happened since the 1979 Revolution and likely to be a cause of significant infighting and upheaval. There are good reasons why Iran might want a decade of calm to rebuild and recover.

So, we just don’t know which way the US-Iran diplomacy will go and who might be the “winners” and “losers” of that process.

We can say with some degree of certainty that an overall loser in all this, over time, likely will be Israel generally and Netanyahu specifically. He had two immediate objectives in launching the bombing campaign when he did: to destroy the Iranian nuclear program; and to derail the possibility of an Iran-US diplomatic process. Both of these required that the US join the bombing campaign, which is what happened. No doubt Netanyahu hoped the military campaign would press on to achieve his real goal of regime change in Iran.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Instead, the US pulled back. If the negative scenario outlined above comes to pass, Iran will eventually have a bomb. If the more positive one comes to pass, the US and Iran will enter into a diplomatic process which could see Iran have the time it needs to eventually recover, while still having a clandestine nuclear capability hidden away somewhere for the future.

Both of these are exactly the outcomes Netanyahu sought to prevent.

Netanyahu launched the strikes to prevent an Iranian bomb; to prevent any Iran-US diplomacy from taking root; and to maintain himself in power by deflecting international and Israeli attention from Gaza and his own domestic political failings.

For all the undoubted tactical brilliance of the Israeli military’s strikes on Iran, his gamble looks like it will eventually be a strategic failure.

Peter Jones is a Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. He is also Executive Director of The Ottawa Dialogue, a University-based organization that runs Track 1.5 and Track Two diplomatic dialogues around the world.