U.S. drawn deeper into war, as Trump calls for Iran to accept a deal
American aircraft flying low and slow over Iran searched for a downed aviator and took fire from the ground. The airman was rescued early Sunday morning local time, according to a U.S. official and a White House official. But the U.S. is being drawn deeper in, and the commander-in-chief is posting strike videos – while sounding more bellicose than ever.
"We're going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong," President Trump said Wednesday.
So far, the U.S. has struck mostly military targets (like an ammunition depot), but it also hit Iran's biggest bridge – a civilian target – which U.S. officials said was used to transport missiles.
The president threatened much worse if Iran does not come to terms by Monday night. In his address to the nation Wednesday, Mr. Trump said, "If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously."
"Electrical generating plants power hospitals, they power schools, water sanitation facilities, the things that you need to sustain basic day-to-day living for a civilian population," said Tess Bridgeman, who was a legal adviser to President Obama's National Security Council. "Obliterating all power plants, threatening coercive actions against the civilian population to try to bring a government to the negotiating table, those kinds of things are flatly illegal."
Elliott Abrams, who served as special representative for Iran in the first Trump administration, says punishing the Iranian population would undercut the American cause. "We want the Iranian people on our side," he said. "I'd rather see us go after regime targets, assets they use to repress the Iranian people, not assets Iranians use to live their daily lives."
It also seems far removed from the reason President Trump went to war: to make sure Iran does not build a nuclear weapon.
Has he done that? "Unfortunately not," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, and a leading expert on Iran's nuclear program, which he says has been seriously set back. "The most important part that remains is the highly-enriched uranium, and that has not been destroyed or taken by the United States or Israel."
Albright says that, as long as Iran has highly-enriched uranium, it has a path to a nuclear weapon.
Half of Iran's highly-enriched uranium is believed buried inside the Isfahan mountain complex – and President Trump seems willing to leave it there, claiming, "We have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we'll hit them with missiles very hard again."
The U.S. can bomb the complex to make the uranium even harder to get to, but that is not the entire stockpile. "It's a big question about where is the rest, because the rest is enough for at least two or three nuclear weapons," Albright said.
Abrams says the war will likely leave Iran more determined, not less determined, to get a bomb: "I think the war leads them to believe that they need a nuclear weapon," he said. "I don't think they're going to do this tomorrow morning. I think they'll return to it over time, if the regime survives."
Asked if we have seen the last of Iran's nuclear program, Albright replied, "The way things are going now, I don't think we're going to see the end of it."
For more info:
- Tess Bridgeman, co-editor-in-chief, Just Security
- Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
- David Albright, president, Institute for Science and International Security
Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
See more:
- The prospects for "boots on the ground" to seize Iran's enriched uranium ("Sunday Morning")
- With Iran choking off the Strait of Hormuz, what can the U.S. do? ("Sunday Morning")
- How Trump and Netanyahu launched attacks on Iran ("Sunday Morning")
- Uncertainty deepens over Iran as U.S. and Israeli attacks continue ("Sunday Morning")
