On Monday (23), the day after the United States bombings to Iran’s nuclear facilities, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire between the Iranian and Israel regime after exchanges of attacks that had started on the 13th, the largest climb of hostilities between the two enemies since the Islamic Revolution in the Persian country in 1979.
“Many people were dying, and the situation would only get worse. It would have destroyed the whole Middle East,” Trump told NBC News shortly after making the announcement on the Truth Social network.
When asked how much time expects the ceasefire to last, the Republican president was optimistic: “I think the ceasefire is unlimited. It will last forever.”
There is no doubt that Israel and the United States have won a year ago gigantic victories about Iran, an existential threat to the largest American ally in the Middle East.
The Israeli forces first swept the leaders of the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, through which Tehran promoted aggression against the country, and in the last ten days they imposed (with the help of the US on Sunday) dome losses and nuclear and military infrastructures far higher than those who had already inflicted on the exchange of direct attacks from April and October 2024.
It is tempting to see a defeat of the resistance axis, as the alliance between Iran and the terrorist groups it supports is called, but the point is that this threat has not yet been totally eradicated. For starters, it is obviously necessary to wait to see if the ceasefire will be implemented as announced by Trump and if he will support himself.
The second point is that it is not yet known exactly how much of the Iranian nuclear program has been really destroyed. In the early hours after the American bombing on Sunday (22), Tehran claimed that he had removed the inventory of enriched uranium from the affected plants.
However, in an interview with Fox News on Monday, Trump’s deputy JD Vance assured that US attacks managed to comply with the goal of preventing uranium from being used to the point of being used in the construction of nuclear weapons.
“Our goal was to bury uranium, and I think uranium is buried, but our goal was to eliminate the enrichment program and eliminate their ability to convert this enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon,” Vance said.
“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they do not have the ability to enrich it at 90% or more, then they do not have the ability to convert it into a nuclear weapon. This is a successful mission,” he argued.
In an interview with Fox News, the reserve brigadeiro general Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Strategy and Security Institute and former head of intelligence of Israel’s defense forces (FDI), said the Israeli and American offensives of the last days weakened “the Iranian threat” but “the journey is far from over.”
“I don’t think the program is [totalmente] destroyed, ”he argued.“ They still have enriched uranium, the ability to produce centrifuges and scientists [do programa nuclear]. We kill many, but not all. And even the bombarded facilities – we are not sure if nothing was left, ”he said.
In this sense, Kuperwasser pointed out that although the possibility of Iran can not yet be discarded to continue or resume its nuclear program, the difference now is that “a key strategic threshold has been overtaken.”
“So far, everything was secret: sabotage, diplomacy, sanctions. But now, military action has been much more effective. If Iran tries to resume its program, they know that we – and the Americans – we are prepared to attack again,” he compared.
In an article, Matthew Chance, corresponding chief of global affairs at CNN, said that even if damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities were as significant as reported by the United States and Israel, that does not mean that the Iranian nuclear threat has come to an end-mainly because more radical names within the supreme leader there may become even more influential from now on.
“For years, hard line voices within the Islamic Republic have been crying for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against exactly this kind of overwhelming attack,” said Chance.
“Even if Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program has strictly peaceful purposes, these appeals will now inevitably have been reinforced and nuclear straw defenders may finally get what they want,” he warned.
