One thing is very clear about the June 23 attack by large U.S. bombers on the three Iranian nuclear processing sites. That one-third of the way around the world \u2013 from Missouri to Iran and return \u2013 flight and targeting apparently came off successfully even if it wasn\u2019t the superlatives the president has to have.<\/p>\n
Iran long had a reputation for developing a nuclear threat and the U.S. had prepared for such an eventuality, including having the extra large ordnance that would be necessary and the planning to deliver it.<\/p>\n
The reach of the U.S. military has shown to be long. What isn\u2019t so certain is what happens next.<\/p>\n
Iran has shown that its capacity to defend itself with conventional weapons is limited to nonexistent. Israel, in what it\u2019s calling the Twelve Day War, gained control of the airspace over most of Iran and eliminated some of its political leadership and nuclear scientists, making it much less threatening for the U.S. bombers that arrived in the middle of the night about a week later.<\/p>\n
Seeing how easily conventional weapons were neutralized, of course Iran will recover its ability to develop nuclear weapons and likely at a faster pace than previously. It may say \u201csure\u201d to any initiative by the Trump administration to shape a no-nuclear agreement, but simultaneously it will be reconstructing its underground facilities.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Iran is certain to appreciate that Donald Trump doesn\u2019t recognize \u201cagreements\u201d when it doesn\u2019t suit him, having seen him cancel its broad nuclear agreement that was negotiated during the Obama administration, and the vacillations that are embedded in Trump\u2019s tariff shifts.<\/p>\n
What Americans should not want to happen is to have the U.S. become the military force that polices Iran\u2019s nuclear future. Leave that up to Israel with its intelligence gathering skills, and to other countries in the region that don\u2019t want an armed Iran.<\/p>\n
The region can breathe more easily for a while as a result of the Israeli and U.S. air attacks, but only for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
thing is very clear about the June 23 attack by large U.S. bombers on the three Iranian nuclear processing sites. That one-third of the way around the world \u2013 from Missouri to Iran and return \u2013 flight and targeting apparently came off successfully even if it wasn\u2019t the superlatives the president has to have. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21621"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}