Analysis Trump’s reasons for Iran attacks questioned

Michael Collins and

Francesca Chambers

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and members of his administration repeatedly made the case for military strikes against Iran by arguing that the Middle Eastern country posed a serious threat to the United States.

Iran, they said, was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.

But national security analysts and experts on Iran and its ruling regime say those claims are based on assumptions that are wrong or greatly exaggerated.

'It’s not true,' Matthew Bunn, an arms control expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said of the assertion that Iran is close to developing a nuclear weapon.

The United States and Israel launched military strikes and 'major combat operations' against Iran on Feb.28, targeting the country’s missile capabilities and its leaders.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the joint strikes, an Israeli source confirmed to USA TODAY. Trump also announced Khamenei’s death. Iran’s Foreign Ministry insisted earlier in the day Feb.28 that he and President Masoud Pezeshkian remained 'safe and sound,' but state media later confirmed Khamenei had been killed.

Reuters reported that 201 people were killed and 747 were wounded in the attacks, according to Iranian media that cited the Red Crescent, a humanitarian group working in the region. Official estimates of fatalities and injuries haven’t been confirmed by American or international authorities.

Senior Trump administration officials, briefing reporters after the attacks on the condition of anonymity, insisted the strikes were necessary to protect Americans from what they said was 'an intolerable risk' to the United States from Iran’s development of long-range missiles.

Trump said during his State of the Union address Feb.24 that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles that could soon reach the United States. He repeated those claims in a video posted on social media after the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks.

The United States had been negotiating with Iran in the hope of striking a deal that would avoid a military confrontation. A third round of indirect talks ended Feb.26 without a major breakthrough, but negotiators for both countries had been expected to meet again this week.

In their briefing with reporters, a senior administration official said Iran refused to even discuss its ballistic missile program inside or outside of mediated talks with the United States. That was unacceptable to the Trump administration, the official said.

Another U.S. official said the United States had intelligence showing Iran was in the throes of rebuilding three nuclear sites that the U.S. military bombed last summer.

The officials said they determined in the course of talks that Iran was seeking to preserve its ability to enrich uranium so that over time they could use it to make a nuclear bomb. Iran has said it seeks to use enriched uranium for non-weapons purposes, such as energy production.

One official said the administration offered to give Iran free fuel in perpetuity. But Iran declined, saying it needed to enrich uranium, the official said.

'The fact that they weren’t willing to take free nuclear fuel was a big tell to us that they were looking to buy time,' the official said.

Iran has a stockpile of nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched at 60% purity, the official said. Uranium enriched at 60% could be converted within a week to 90%, which is the level needed to make a nuclear weapon, the official said.

But national security analysts said Iran doesn’t have the capability to enrich uranium to 90%.

After the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities last June, Trump announced that the sites had been 'obliterated.'

Iran had no operating enrichment facilities after those attacks, said Bunn, who has analyzed the long-term risks of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

'The major facilities of Iran’s program and a lot of the key experts were destroyed,' he said.

Iran may have been able to rescue some of its enriched uranium stockpile either before or after the June attacks, Bunn said. But in terms of a facility that would make weapons-grade uranium, 'none of that is there,' he said.

Experts also have cast doubts on the administration’s claim that Iran was close to making ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. U.S. intelligence reports don’t back those assertions, according to Reuters. Three sources familiar with the assessments told the news agency that Trump’s claims appear to be exaggerated.

Iran has the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East, and its missiles are able to strike Israel, U.S. bases in the region, and parts of Europe. It also has developed so-called space-launch vehicles that have put satellites into orbit and that experts say could be modified into intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

But, 'it’s not so easy to build a ballistic missile that’s going to reach the United States, when we’ve done so much damage to their program until now,' said Daniel Kurtzer, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel during George W. Bush’s administration. He also served as U.S. ambassador to Egypt under former President Bill Clinton.

Recent U.S. intelligence assessments suggest Iran was as much as 10 years away from developing a missile capable of striking the United States, said Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.