U.S. attacks Iranian nuclear facilities

The United States attacked three key Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday, June 15, 2025. This has led President Donald Trump to claim the operation “obliterated” the sites, but officials are still assessing how significant a blow it dealt to Tehran’s program.

President Trump alternated between issuing militaristic threats against Iran on social media and holding private concerns that a military strike could drag the U.S. into a prolonged war.

Dr. Evelyn Farkas, an Executive Director at The McCain Institute, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the strikes and worries about Iranian reprisals.

In terms of the initial judgement of the strikes by the U.S. military on Iran’s nuclear sites, Dr. Farkas said they did accomplish the goal of setting back the country’s nuclear program. “We know that the Iranian nuclear weapons program has been set back, and that is a success,” Dr. Farkas said.

However, Dr. Farkas says that the short term setbacks don’t answer all the potential questions that will come up as time passes from the strikes. “What happens in the medium to long-term? Does the Iranian government have an ability to reconstitute? How quickly can they do it, and in the meantime what happens internally in Iran?” Dr. Farkas said.

The biggest need now, according to Dr. Farkas, is for negotiations on ending the war to occur between all the countries involved. “The most important point is having a ceasefire and then a negotiation with the outside parties to make sure that the war between Israel and Iran is definitively over,” Dr. Farkas said.

Negotiations are still possible even as Iran is angered by the U.S strikes, according to Dr. Farkas.  “Iran is weakened, it’s in their interest right now to negotiate,” Dr. Farkas said. “Honestly it’s in their interest even to negotiate in bad faith, they cannot afford to be hit militarily again.”

“But by the same token, if they don’t negotiate in good faith, they know they have an American president who’s not predictable.”