The Week: America Smashes Iran’s Nuclear Sites — and Negotiates a Cease-Fire

• New York Democrats certainly made a rank choice.

• President Trump pulled the trigger on long-advertised strikes against Iran’s atomic-weapons facilities. With Operation Midnight Hammer—a complex operation involving hundreds of aircraft and naval vessels, several dozen Tomahawk missiles, and 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators—America joined Israel’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. The targets included hardened facilities like the Natanz Complex and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. The hardest of those targets, the deeply buried and reinforced Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, has been the subject of controversy since the strikes. A “low confidence” Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of the damage there suggested the strikes had failed to knock the plant out of commission. Critics of the strikes jumped at the opportunity to call the operation a failure, but the DIA’s product—one of many analyses from America’s 18 intelligence agencies—should not be taken as the last word on these strikes. The CIA’s battle damage assessment, for example, aligns with the conclusions reached by the Israelis, the Iranians, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and private firms like the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, all of whom have said that the damage at Fordow and other Iranian facilities is severe. Iran showed us its own practical assessment: It sued for peace shortly after the American strikes. In a display even more impotent than the show of defiance Iran mounted after the 2020 strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran meekly warned the U.S. and Qatar before launching a face-saving volley of missiles at a sparely populated nearby American air base. Trump saw that as an opportunity to de-escalate. He swiftly negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. The Middle East has undergone a rapid strategic revolution that favors Israeli and American interests, and it appears to have just made another big advance.

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• New York Democrats certainly made a rank choice.

• President Trump pulled the trigger on long-advertised strikes against Iran’s atomic-weapons facilities. With Operation Midnight Hammer—a complex operation involving hundreds of aircraft and naval vessels, several dozen Tomahawk missiles, and 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators—America joined Israel’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. The targets included hardened facilities like the Natanz Complex and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. The hardest of those targets, the deeply buried and reinforced Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, has been the subject of controversy since the strikes. A “low confidence” Defense Intelligence Agency assessment of the damage there suggested the strikes had failed to knock the plant out of commission. Critics of the strikes jumped at the opportunity to call the operation a failure, but the DIA’s product—one of many analyses from America’s 18 intelligence agencies—should not be taken as the last word on these strikes. The CIA’s battle damage assessment, for example, aligns with the conclusions reached by the Israelis, the Iranians, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and private firms like the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, all of whom have said that the damage at Fordow and other Iranian facilities is severe. Iran showed us its own practical assessment: It sued for peace shortly after the American strikes. In a display even more impotent than the show of defiance Iran mounted after the 2020 strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran meekly warned the U.S. and Qatar before launching a face-saving volley of missiles at a sparely populated nearby American air base. Trump saw that as an opportunity to de-escalate. He swiftly negotiated a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. The Middle East has undergone a rapid strategic revolution that favors Israeli and American interests, and it appears to have just made another big advance.