BDA (June 27, 2025)

Welcome to Home & Away. Once again, the week was dominated by events in the Middle East, where the conflict among Iran, Israel, and the United States entered a third phase, one in which Iranian decision-making has moved to center stage. My own assessment is that Iran will continue to avoid meaningful retaliation to the U.S. attacks and likely adhere to the ceasefire with Israel. This approach will allow it to prioritize consolidating the strength of its regime domestically in the short run and, over time, reconstituting its nuclear program in the hope it could deter future such attacks. My Project Syndicate column on all this and what it means for the United States and Israel is reprinted at the bottom of today’s newsletter. And here is a link to the nearly one-hour conversation I had on the Middle East and other foreign policy issues with California Governor Gavin Newsom.

BDA 1.0

The ongoing debate between President Trump, his own intelligence community, and Israel’s spy agencies over the BDA, or Battle Damage Assessment, of what last weekend’s U.S. strikes accomplished tends to miss the point. BDA is as much art as it is science, dependent on interpretation, incomplete data, and the assumptions analysts bring to their work. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that different intelligence agencies would reach different conclusions in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

The bigger issue is that we don’t know how much of Iran’s enriched uranium was located outside of the targeted facilities. But BDA aside, prudence dictates assuming that some, and possibly a good deal, of Iran’s nuclear-related material, equipment, and know-how survived or avoided the attacks. Which is to say the Iranian program was set back but not “obliterated” as the Trump administration claims. Which is also to say the problem was not solved.

In general, I am intrigued by this president’s willingness to distance himself from Israel and, occasionally, the preferences of its prime minister. He has done it a number of times, be it over Iran, the Houthis, or Hamas. Curiously, he also recently stood up for Netanyahu—whose situation he clearly empathizes with, given his own experiences—against the Israeli legal system, calling for the cancellation of Bibi’s ongoing corruption trial.

A hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy is that friends and allies do not occupy a special place—indeed, I would argue in instances they are treated worse than the country’s rivals and adversaries. Trump’s comment about Israel and Iran, that “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” may not rival FDR’s “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” or JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” but it does underscore just how unsentimental Trump tends to be.

One big question is whether this will translate into a new willingness on Trump’s part to press Netanyahu on Gaza and possibly the Palestinian issue more generally. Quite possibly. Trump will want to point to another foreign policy accomplishment and bringing about an end to the ongoing war while securing the release of Israel’s remaining hostages in Gaza and adding Saudi Arabia to the Abraham Accords would surely qualify. Politics may also favor a breakthrough here, as Netanyahu is, as a result of Israel’s attacks on Iran, stronger at home, while Trump hardly has to worry that Democrats could succeed in painting him as insufficiently supportive of Israel. All of which is to say watch this space.

Democrats, for their part, seem to be focusing on the constitutionality of the president’s decision to strike Iran. All things being equal, when you are debating process, you are losing on policy and politics, even though polls suggest a wide swath of Americans, including a majority of independents, disapprove of the strikes. Still, the Democrats are losing here. Further weakening their stance is the fact that presidents of their own party have also used military force without congressional authorization.

Speaking of foreign policy accomplishments, President Trump arguably racked a significant one up at this week’s NATO summit. There, allies agreed to raise their spending on defense, defense-related infrastructure, and Ukraine to 5 percent of GDP over the next decade. This constitutes an important step in the right direction, although how this money is spent is equally critical. It remains to be seen whether the Europeans are prepared to integrate their defense spending to avoid redundancies and increase capabilities and efficiencies.

After earlier inconsistencies, the president was also more supportive of NATO and Article 5 (the commitment to collective security). Missing though was any indication of what he is prepared to do to support Ukraine when U.S. military aid runs out this summer. Without such assistance, the war is almost sure to continue and diplomacy to fail as Putin will see no reason to compromise but rather an opportunity to press his military advantage.

BDA 2.0

I speak here not of Battle Damage Assessment but of Ballot Damage Assessment. Democrats now own the results of their primary for mayor here in New York City, where, as you all likely know by now, an inexperienced, one might say unqualified, 33-year-old state assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, won a plurality of the vote in a major upset. (This plurality is all but certain to become a majority once the ranked-choice voting process is completed in early July.)

Will he become mayor this November? He well might. Mamdani is an impressive political athlete. As the challenger to an unpopular incumbent, he should benefit from widespread frustration with many aspects of life in the city—even if quite a few of the policies he favors, if enacted, would likely make things even worse. There are indications that the establishment will rally around none other than Eric Adams, the flawed incumbent now running as an independent. If so, pressure would grow on the once-favorite former governor Andrew Cuomo not to stand in the general election, and while this would help Adams, it would be unlikely to help him enough.

Mamdani looks to be the favorite even though a good many of his positions are far out of the mainstream nationally. Among other things, he has pledged to raise the corporate tax rate and taxes on those earning over a million dollars a year, freeze rent in the city’s stabilized units, establish a city-owned grocery store in each borough, and pilot a Department of Community Safety rather than increase the size of the city’s understaffed police force. He has raised the possibility of taxing the city’s two leading (and selective) universities, NYU and Columbia, to subsidize a third, namely, the City University of New York (CUNY). He is also decidedly unsympathetic (many would argue hostile) to Israel.

Mamdani’s willingness to tack toward the center would enhance his electoral prospects but, even more than that, his eventual ability to govern were he to win. If he resists, he risks an outflow from New York of wealthy individuals and businesses, further reducing the city’s tax base and consequently the government’s ability to pay for the expanded services that he advocates. Mamdani would be wise not just to moderate some of his policies but to signal that he appreciates the difference between campaigning and governing. Announcing plans to appoint some who have both business and government experience once he is in office would be a smart step.

Regardless of his popularity as a candidate amongst certain groups of New Yorkers, what he does as mayor could become a problem for Democrats nationally. The overlap between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America is a gift to Republicans who are wont to cast big city liberal mayors seen as radical, or incompetent, or both as emblematic of the larger Democratic Party’s brand. This in turn allows them to focus on the flaws of the Democrats rather than defend their own shortcomings. It will be interesting to see how the battle plays out between progressives and centrists in the Democratic Party and between Democratic progressives and Republican populists at the national level as we approach 2028.

PSA

It is my plan to mark the Fourth of July (which falls on a Friday this year) by not putting out a newsletter. If the world cooperates, the next edition of Home & Away should arrive in your inbox or on your screen in two weeks, on July 11. Have a wonderful holiday and do find a moment to toast this wonderful country of ours as we celebrate its 249^th year.

“The Middle East War Enters a Third Phase”

We are now in the third phase of the current crisis in the Middle East. In the previous two phases, the initiative was with Israel and then the United States. Now it has passed to Iran.

To recap: In the first phase, Israel, concerned that Iran had moved much closer to developing nuclear weapons, attacked Iranian military sites, nuclear installations, and leadership figures. Israel’s government, more risk-averse in the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7, was no longer constrained by fear of retaliation from Iranian proxies it had degraded or by Iran’s ability to defend itself, which Israel had also weakened.

The war’s second phase was initiated by the US, which targeted three installations central to Iran’s nuclear program. B-2 stealth bombers dropped a number of large “bunker buster” bombs over the uranium enrichment complexes at Fordow and Natanz while US submarines launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at the nuclear facility in Isfahan.

For both Israel and the US, this was a war of choice: other options were available. Moreover, the attacks were preventive, rather than preemptive, in the sense that an Iranian nuclear breakout was a gathering threat, not an imminent one. It is less clear why the US acted when it did, other than that diplomacy looked unpromising and there was an opportunity to undertake the mission with minimum risk to US forces. That said, both Israel and the US had run out of patience with Iran, which was enriching uranium to levels that made sense only if its goal was to develop nuclear weapons rather than generate electricity.

US President Donald Trump claimed that the attacks he ordered were a spectacular military success and that the three Iranian facilities were completely “obliterated.” This has yet to be shown. Normally, assessing bomb damage in such circumstances takes some time, and is as much an art as a science.

More important, the attack could have succeeded in destroying the three selected facilities but failed in the larger sense of eliminating Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, this is almost certain to be the case, as Iran had ample opportunity to relocate enriched uranium, advanced centrifuges, and other bomb-related technology to multiple locations that for now are unknown.

What, then, should we expect from Iran? Much is being written about Iran’s retaliatory options. Iran could wage cyber warfare against targets in the US or around the world. It could mount assorted terrorist actions against American civilians, businesses, and embassies. It could attack the estimated 40,000 US troops in the Middle East, as well as the energy infrastructure of its Arab neighbors. It could further interfere with shipping in local waterways, either directly or through a proxy such as Yemen’s Houthis.

But it is not obvious that Iran would do any of this now. The performative “attack” on the US base in Qatar signaled that Iran wants to avoid further escalation and exposing itself to more attacks targeting its economy and its military and political leaders. As a result, Iran is likely to focus on shoring up the regime domestically, to ensure its survival.

Over time, Iran can also be expected to try to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, as many there will judge the Israeli and American attacks never would have happened had Iran possessed a nuclear deterrent. Diplomacy is unlikely to prevent Iran from succeeding, which means that, with or without a ceasefire, Israel or US attacks could well be required whenever and wherever it is discovered that Iran is carrying out nuclear weapons-related work.

This reality will lead many to argue that nothing short of regime change will prevent the eventual emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran, a development that would pose an existential threat to Israel and lead more countries in the region to acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Not surprisingly, we are already hearing calls for regime change from some in Israel and in the US.

But regime change is easier said than done. It tends to happen when there is a strong, organized internal opposition, a crumbling regime, or an outside power willing and able to oust the leadership, occupy the country, and insert a successor. None of these conditions exists in Iran. All of which is to say outsiders would be wise to base policy toward Iran on the assumption that the current government or something much like it will be in charge for the foreseeable future.

It is a truism that it takes only one side to start a war, but that ending one requires all parties involved. In this Middle East crisis, the initiative is now with Iran. Only its rulers can decide if the US attack is the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. It is difficult to overstate how much depends on their answer.

As always, some links to click on. And feel free to share Home & Away.

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Richard Haass in the news

Sunday, June 22: Fared Zakaria, GPS (“Mapping Out Iran's Options”)

Sunday, June 22: Katie Couric Media (on Iran)

Monday, June 23: Morning Joe (“Put Away Your Phone, No More Talk About Regime Change': Richard Haass' Advice to Trump”)

Monday, June 23: The Situation Room (“Worrisome That Russia Could Help Iran With Nuclear Program”)

Monday, June 23: Bloomberg Surveillance (on Congress and Iran)

Monday, June 23: Closing Bell Overtime (“Regime Change in Iran Is a Wish, Not a Strategy”)

Tuesday, June 24: American Council of Trustees and Alumni (“Guarding Democracy by Teaching Civics”)

Tuesday, June 24: “The Middle East War Enters a New Phase” (Project Syndicate)

Wednesday, June 25: This Is Gavin Newsom (on Iran and the state of American democracy)

Wednesday, June 25: Katy Tur Reports (“Why Iran's Nuclear Capabilities Are Still a Problem for the United States”)