Reiterating a long-running US intelligence community consensus that Iran has not been building a nuclear bomb, US intelligence officials are warning that an American entry into Israel’s war would likely incentivize Iran to pursue becoming a nuclear-weapon state after all. Meanwhile, insiders say President Trump is wary of turning Iran into “another Libya” if Israel’s regime-change ambitions are somehow realized.
In other major developments:
- President Trump on Thursday issued a statement seemingly granting more time for a diplomatic solution: “Considering there’s a significant likelihood of negotiations that may or may not happen with Iran soon, I will determine whether or not to engage in the next two weeks.”
- The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency has advised top officials that America’s formidable 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs may be insufficient to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility buried in a mountain at Fordo — and that doing so may require a nuclear bomb. Otherwise, even in the wake of bombings of various other facilities, Iran could conceivably be capable of producing a bomb if it decided to.
- Steve Bannon joined Donald Trump for lunch at the White House on Thursday; Bannon is staunchly opposed to America entering Israel’s war, telling an audience, “We can’t do this again. We’ll tear the country apart. We can’t have another Iraq.”
- Iranians have largely been cut off from the internet for more than 36 hours, with some observers claiming it reflects the government working to stifle domestic dissent, but most attributing it to Iranian wariness of potential cyberattacks.
- Israel and Iran traded more attacks over Thursday night, with the Israeli Air Force claiming it hit ballistic missile launchers, missile production facilities and a nuclear research center, and Iran hitting the city of Beersheba, with unconfirmed reports of damage to a Microsoft building.
New footage from Beersheba targeted by Iran. pic.twitter.com/QUmipEZEhr
— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 20, 2025
Speaking to the New York Times, senior intelligence officials say a US strike on the uranium enrichment facility buried under 300 feet of mountainous rock at Fordo, or a US-facilitated assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would probably push Iran to build a nuclear bomb to deter further aggression against it. In 2003, Khamenei issued a religious order — or fatwa — prohibiting the development of any kind of weapon of mass destruction. That edict is “right now holding,” a senior intel official told the Times.
One of the officials cast doubts on Israeli claims that Iran could have a bomb in 15 days. Iran would first have to take uranium it’s already enriched to 60% and enrich it to 90%. That’s probably the easiest part. Next, they’d have to construct a nuclear explosive device, and miniaturize it so it can fit inside a missile warhead. As an alternative, US intel analysts speculate that Iran could build a crude, 10,000-pound Hiroshima-style bomb that would have to be dropped by plane — which wouldn’t be a particularly credible deterrent. The analysts say that, contrary to Israeli claims, it would take between several months and a year to have a missile-ready warhead after a hypothetical decision to pursue one. Of course, it’s always worth noting that Netanyahu has been warning of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb since 1992 — when he said they would have one by 1997 at the latest.
🤯 WOW:
2,780 year old israelite tablet finally translated to reveal its message:
“Persia is only weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon” pic.twitter.com/0KIfHABYIE— Not Sure Gnosis 🦈 (@ViceLitty) June 18, 2025
The US assessment that Iran has not decided to pursue a nuclear weapon comes three months after the same conclusion was shared with Congress by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, which in turn came 18 years after the intelligence community first made that assessment. When confronted with Gabbard’s testimony in the wake of Israel’s bombing-and-mass-assassination attack on Iran, Trump told a reporter, “I don’t care what she said. They were very close to getting a nuke.” Vice President JD Vance offered his own flimsy deflection in a social media post, writing “Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then.” Thursday’s remarks from senior intel officials severely undercut Trump’s and Vance’s characterizations.
Unlike nuclear-weapon-state Israel, Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful. In 2015, Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which it agreed to physical modifications, additional monitoring and other provisions that would assure outsiders that the country would be incapable of enriching uranium to a weapons-grade level. Though Iran was in full compliance, President Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed harsh economic sanctions on the country — having promised to do so in a 2016 presidential campaign fueled by $45 million from Israel-focused billionaires Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. His JCPOA withdrawal came just a month after Trump appointed archetypal Iran hawk and neocon John Bolton as National Security Advisor.
After several days of the feeling that US engagement in Israel’s war could be imminent, Trump’s setting of a two-week timeframe for making that enormously consequential decision partially reflects his wariness that Iran could turn into a failed state if the Ayatollah’s regime is toppled, according to administration officials who talked to the New York Post. One of the insiders said
“[He] doesn’t want it to turn into Libya…There are two reasons Trump talks about Libya: the first is the chaos after what we did to Gaddafi. The second is the Libya intervention made it more difficult to negotiate deals with countries like North Korea and Iran.”
Seeking to appease the West, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi famously surrendered his nuclear development program in 2003, only to be the victim of a US-NATO regime-change campaign in 2011 that culminated in his being anally raped with a bayonet and then savagely beaten to death. That dark chapter looms as a stark cautionary tale for rulers all around the world facing American demands.
Meanwhile, Libyans continue to suffer from the result of that Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton toppling of Gaddafi, which led to utter chaos, blacks being sold in open-air slave markets and illegal immigrants pouring into Europe as they flee the Western-cultivated Hell-scape. Insiders say Trump has also raised the specter of the disastrous outcomes of US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump’s confrontation with the ghosts of failed interventions — past, present and future — comes as Tucker Carlson, other major conservative figures and legions of MAGA social-media users are urging him not to get America involved in another foreign policy disaster. Is the growing right-wing uproar having an effect?
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