As Israel and Iran weigh truce, US troops in region remain on alert
A shaky ceasefire between Iran and Israel Monday was announced by President Donald Trump amid doubt about whether those nations were actually on board.
A few hours later, it was being tested by fresh Israeli attacks on Iran. But some analysts say a truce, should it hold up, could serve as an example of the effectiveness of a large but limited use of U.S. military power.
The ceasefire announcement came on the heels of a massive military strike Sunday in which the U.S. followed Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. President Trump quickly pronounced an “overwhelming success,” and from the U.S. military’s point of view, this was indeed the case.
Why We Wrote This
Iran attacked a U.S. military base in response to the bombing of its nuclear sites. American bases in the Middle East remain on high alert amid a hoped-for truce.
Operation Midnight Hammer, as it was code-named, was a “complex and high-risk mission” involving deception tactics like decoy stealth bombers, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said later that day. Not a single known shot was fired at the B-2 bombers involved, he added.
The risks extended beyond that attack. By Monday, Iran was aiming missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, America’s largest military installation in the Middle East. Sirens at U.S. bases in Iraq and Kuwait had U.S. forces sheltering against possible further attacks.
Non-interventionists, many of whom are Republicans, pointed to the vulnerability of the 40,000 U.S. troops in the region as proof of their point. “If we didn’t have troops in the region, they couldn’t hit us at all,” says Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities think tank. “We’ve given them hostages in the form of our own personnel at these military bases that they can menace. And I think they will.”
Congressional Research Service, Council on Foreign Relations
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Within an hour the retaliatory barrage was being deemed a face-saving measure, allowing Tehran to respond while minimizing the possibilities for escalation. It turned out Iran had given Qatar a heads-up on the barrage, which Qatar duly passed along to the U.S.
In a post late Monday afternoon, President Trump thanked Iran for the “early notice,” adding that 13 of Iran’s missiles were “knocked down” and the 14th was “set free’’ as unthreatening.
“Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same,’’ the post read.
The U.S. target: Iran’s nuclear sites
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had taken to the podium in his first-ever Pentagon press room briefing Sunday to stress that neither Iranian troops nor Iranian people were the U.S. military’s target, and that the U.S. was not seeking war.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” he said. President Trump “was fully committed to the peace process” and “wanted a negotiated outcome.”
The military objective of the operation was rather to “destroy or severely degrade Iran’s nuclear program,” Secretary Hegseth added.
That “or” was key, analysts said. The difference, they added, could set Tehran off on an even more determined breakout race for nuclear weapons – or end its quest, and get it to the negotiating table.
The American show of force seems to have driven Iran to bargain. It remains to be seen if its nuclear ambitions will end.
Iran has long been motivated to pursue nuclear weapons because it sees them as “the ultimate deterrent. And Iran is right,” Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in an analysis Monday. As proof, look no further than North Korea (which has them) or Ukraine (which doesn’t and has faced invasion by Russia).
Given Western worries that a nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the region, President Trump’s decision to bomb Tehran’s nuclear sites was “probably the right call,” Ms. Harding argued.
Trump administration officials were already declaring Sunday, with characteristic certitude, that it definitely was.
“American deterrence is back,” Mr. Hegseth said.
How degraded is Iran’s nuclear program?
Now attention will turn to just how much of Iran’s nuclear weapons-making capacity was destroyed over the weekend.
Satellites show that Iranian trucks were coming and going frequently from Iranian nuclear plants in the run-up to Sunday’s bombing, potentially carting away enriched uranium deposits and centrifuges, arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a graduate school of Middlebury College in Vermont, noted on X.
News reports have said that the images show up to 16 cargo trucks near the Fordo facility on June 19 and 20 and suggest that those trucks may have been used to move Iran’s uranium stockpiles or seal entrance tunnels before the attacks. The trucks appeared to move unidentified contents about a half mile away, the reports said. Iranian state media outlets have reported that the three sites were evacuated prior to the strikes.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will likely have a big role to play in cataloging what parts of Iran’s nuclear program have been eliminated, and what parts remain.
Iranian Army Press Service/AP
For that, “They are going to need Iran’s cooperation – or at least the cooperation of people who know about all those assets and stockpiles,” says Andrea Strickler, deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think tank.
Absent it, there is the looming threat that additional U.S. military action could be taken.
In the meantime, U.S. military forces in the region remain on alert for potential violations of the ceasefire, or pot shots from militant groups often described as Iranian proxies, but not always entirely beholden to Tehran.
Though these groups have been weakened overall by Israeli attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as by U.S. strikes on the Houthis, all three groups retain capabilities to attack U.S. military interests in places like Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, says Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“Force protection is something that commanders are constantly evaluating,” says U.S. Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, spokesman for NATO’s Supreme Allied Command. “Obviously, in light of recent occurrences, that constant evaluation becomes that much more important.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 24, the day of initial publication, with news of ceasefire violations.
