Trump’s Iran Warpath & D.C. Aftershocks

trump vance hegseth rubio iran
It’s wild, if you think about it: Trump fired all the alleged neo-cons on his N.S.C., then turned around and basically fulfilled a neocon fantasy: attempting to take out Iran’s nuclear program through military force. Photo: Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
&
Julia Ioffe
June 22, 2025

The day after President Donald Trump launched attacks against three Iranian nuclear sites—at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan—his administration is claiming complete and utter success at decimating Iran’s capability to develop a nuclear bomb. Of course, those assessments are likely premature, and we don’t yet know how Iran will respond. In the meantime, I called up my partner Julia Ioffe, among the most expert foreign-policy voices in Washington, to discuss the second-order effects of the U.S. going to war, once again, in the Middle East—from the military ramifications and potential political aftershocks to perhaps the most important question of all: Why now?