Strategic Affairs no. 56

Assessing the U.S. Bombing of Iran

Strategic Affairs no. 56

Assessing the U.S. Bombing of Iran

June 29, 2025

Readers of this newsletter know that I was a skeptic about what could be accomplished by bombing Iran. While much of that skepticism remains, I must express my admiration for how that operation was carried out and the excellence (albeit, incompleteness) of its obvious results.

We “owe” Iran. I have had that terrible emotion in my gut since the year-long hostage crisis in the Carter Administration. In the name of God, Iran became a lawless authoritarian state, and the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. It had a proxy empire of demi-terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.

In America’s war in Iraq, the Iranian government encouraged violent Shia militia groups and gave them a killing weapon called the EFP, an explosively formed projectile that killed 900 American Soldiers and Marines.

I am constitutionally inclined to support taking the fight to Tehran. I recognize that I have Iranian counterparts with the equal and opposite opinion.

Second, as an old soldier, I am also inclined to admire a superbly conducted military operation. The Israelis hit their marks in the air and on the ground, destroying key targets and taking out military leaders and nuclear scientists. Their operation may mark the greatest intelligence preparation of any battlefield in history. Hats off to the Mossad. Lebanon and Iran were ‘drop the mike’ performances.

The United States was necessary for the grand finale. Our Air Force, Navy, and Army executed an operation that could only be carried out by U.S. forces.

We have uniquely capable weapons like the bunker busters and the sea-launched Tomahawk land attack missiles. We have uniquely capable platforms, like the B-2 Stealth Bomber and guided missile attack submarines that can carry over 100 incredibly accurate cruise missiles. U.S. Army air defenders dealt masterfully with Iran’s revenge. With only one Patriot Missile battery, a Captain and his 40 soldiers shot down an entire barrage of Iranian missiles fired at our base in Doha, Qatar. Most of all, we have superb men and women in uniform who are educated, trained, and experienced to carry out incredibly complex missions with minimal collateral damage.

The Pentagon favors the term Warriors, but these men and women are also masters of military art and science. Moscow and Beijing have witnessed a new level of excellence in military operations. What happened in Iran is a small-scale example of the whupass that the United States could deliver on a massive scale in World War III. Most of all, America knows how to make all the instruments in the military orchestra work together, a skill that has often eluded the Russians in Ukraine and remains a goal for China’s modern, but untested People’s Liberation Army.

At the same time, this was a battle in a long campaign to keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon. While we have destroyed many of the physical facilities and taken out some of the key human experts, there are many remaining questions.

Where and in what condition are the 880 pounds of enriched uranium? Buried underground, or widely distributed and secured before the attack?

Are there secret facilities that we don’t know about?

What effect has this operation had on the resistance to the Mullah-dominated autocracy?

Will the people --- like many bombed populations --- rally to the government, or will they see this attack as a spur to the next Iranian revolution?

As noted in Strategic Affairs no. 55, the ceasefire will ultimately end in diplomacy. To riff on Sir Winston Churchill, let the jaw, jaw, jaw soon replace the war, war, war in this part of the Middle East.

Joseph J. Collins served in the Department of Defense for 46 years and spent more than a decade in strategic affairs in the Pentagon. From 2001 to 2004, he was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Office of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.