• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
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June 27, 2025, 1:37 PM View Comments ()

It’s tempting to think that the joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran has dealt with the problem posed by Iran’s nuclear program. The Trump administration and Washington’s hawks are certainly trying their best to treat it that way. But the truth is we’ve entered an even more unstable era.

President Donald Trump’s Iran strikes were: almost certainly illegal, most likely unsuccessful, and undeniably unpopular. Democrats and other anti-war leaders should be leaning in hard on all these points. Only by doing so can they help create a political climate where diplomacy has a chance to succeed. So long as Trump believes his problems can be solved by just pressing the “BOMB” button, he will almost certainly do so whenever he becomes frustrated in future talks. This means that instead of negotiated limits on Iran’s nuclear program, Washington will be signing up for a future of continuous war.

On June 21, eight days after Israel launched a massive surprise attack against Iran, the United States joined the war. B-2 stealth bombers dropped 14 of the United States’ most powerful non-nuclear bombs, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, on targets at Fordow and Natanz. Around the same time, a U.S. submarine launched more than two dozen cruise missiles against a nuclear facility in Esfahan. Then on Monday afternoon, after a symbolic retaliatory Iranian missile attack against a U.S. base in Qatar, Trump announced a cease-fire, partially brokered by Qatar.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that an initial assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the attacks had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a matter of weeks. Trump immediately pushed back with multiple angry Truth Social posts. Then the administration offered an assessment from Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, which Israeli sources told me they believe was quickly declassified and released at Trump’s request. The assessment claimed, “The devastating U.S. strike on Fordo … has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”

Nuclear experts aren’t so sure. “A single cascade of 174 IR-6 centrifuges could produce a bomb’s worth of 90% highly enriched uranium from the 60% enriched material, whose location is unknown, in 10-20 days,” wrote James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Iran doesn’t need to rebuild enrichment facilities on their previous scale to get the bomb.”

As for public opinion, a CNN poll released June 24 found that the attacks were “broadly unpopular … with strong disapproval outpacing the share who strongly approve.” Another Quinnipiac University poll found majority opposition to U.S. strikes on Iran, with a “vast majority concerned [the] U.S. will get drawn into a war with Iran.”

The Democratic response was mixed. Several Democrats immediately condemned both the strikes and Trump’s failure to seek the constitutionally required congressional authorization for the use of military force. As part of this effort, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine announced that he would introduce a resolution under the War Powers Act while Reps. Thomas Massie, a Republican, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat, announced they would do the same in the House.

They’re on firm legal ground. Brian Finucane, a senior advisor with the International Crisis Group and former State Department lawyer, called the attack “patently illegal.” Law professor Oona Hathaway, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, wrote in the New York Times that the strikes were illegal under both U.S. and international law.

Democrats need to tell the country why Trump’s attacks have failed on all of these fronts. Otherwise, the risk is that instead of a more durable diplomatic solution, we will see more strikes in the future. These will come with questionable returns and growing risks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly hoped to draw the U.S. into a longer-term conflict to topple the Iranian government, and he cannot be happy with Trump launching one strike then declaring a cease-fire. But the fact remains that he has now successfully normalized the idea that Israel can unilaterally attack Iran whenever it wants.

There is unfortunately a precedent for this approach: Gaza. For years, Israel’s approach to Gaza was to keep it under heavy restriction and allow its Hamas-controlled government just enough support to limp along, then, when a perceived threat emerged, bomb the territory for a few days or weeks, and return to the status quo. The deeply offensive term for this approach among Israeli policymakers was “mowing the lawn.” Its advocates saw it as, if not an ideal approach, at least a sustainable one.

That was true until Oct. 7, 2023. But rather than meaningfully rethink this approach in the wake of that day’s horrific terrorist attacks, Israel, with U.S. support, chose instead to apply it to the whole region. The expansion of this strategy began in Lebanon. After a November cease-fire, the Israel Defense Forces has continued carrying out strikes on Hezbollah “in order to ensure that the Iran-backed group is not able to carry out attacks or rebuild infrastructure in the near term.” According to Israeli analysts, “Israel sees Lebanon as its model for ensuring that Iran does not try to rebuild its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.” We can see that model at work in a recent Al Jazeera report showing that between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 13, 2025, Israel carried out nearly 35,000 recorded attacks across five countries: the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran.

This approach will not bring real, durable security. A recent Foreign Affairs essay from Robert Malley and Hussein Agha argues: “It may not be long before more Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians, and others motivated by their cause—desperate, friends or family members wiped out, craving revenge, with darkness as their sole horizon—resort to unconventional forms of warfare.” The threat, they warn, involves “more lethal and technologically adept versions of yesterday’s hijacked planes and buses, hostage takings, and suicide attacks.”

This terrifying future is easy to imagine if Washington doesn’t change course. To prevent it, Trump should return to the diplomatic track that Netanyahu attempted to tank with his attack on Iran. Trump has already demonstrated his ability to stand up to Netanyahu by pushing him to agree to a January cease-fire in Gaza, and more recently end his war on Iran. He can do this again, bringing in European partners to Iran negotiations and dropping the demand for zero enrichment, which is a poison pill specifically designed to prevent a new agreement.

Trump should then apply the same pressure toward a permanent Gaza cease-fire, ending the crisis that provoked this war, and begin a multilateral process aimed at building a real and durable regional peace not based on perpetual repression and occupation. The last 20 months should’ve proved once and for all where that approach leads.