Credit where it’s due. Twice earlier this year President Trump said that Hamas would have hell to pay if they didn’t release the remaining hostages, with consequences that were less than fully hellish. But Sunday, Trump said on Truth Social, “The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one.”
Apparently, Trump meant it this time. After months where the Hamas negotiating position kept shifting from obstinacy to implausible counteroffers and being all over the map, the Hamas negotiators are now . . . well, they’re now all over the map themselves. It was an Israeli operation, but the U.S. was notified of the attack beforehand.
This was a bad time for Hamas leaders to attempt the “TACO trade.” Trump does not always chicken out.
The Iranian nuclear program could not be reached for comment. In fact, a new analysis of what remains of the Iranian program published yesterday concluded:
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The military attacks destroyed or made inoperative all of Iran’s installed centrifuges — almost 22,000 gas centrifuges — at Iran’s three enrichment sites. They destroyed Iran’s ability to make gas centrifuges, severely degraded its capabilities to research and develop them, and destroyed Iran’s ability to make uranium hexafluoride. In essence, the attacks destroyed Iran’s gas centrifuge enrichment program.
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With the massive destruction of its gas centrifuge program and installed centrifuge cascades, for the first time in over 15 years, Iran has no identifiable route to produce weapon-grade uranium (WGU) in its centrifuge plants. In addition, the attacks caused immense destruction to Iran’s ability to make the nuclear weapon itself.