Why Trump bombed Iran

When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reminded Mr. Trump of that testimony last week aboard Air Force One, he said: “I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one."

But let’s return to the hearing room and listen to what Ms. Gabbard said after that much-played sound bite: “In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decadeslong taboo in Iran of discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear-weapons advocates within Iran’s decision making apparatus."

And then: “Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile is at its highest level and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons."

While the U.S. intelligence community stuck with its assessment that Iran’s leader hadn’t ordered the building of nuclear bombs, the intelligence estimates suggest Iran’s posture on being ready to make a bomb never looked more aggressive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to Israeli intelligence that Iran was moving toward weaponization. It had an increasing stock of 60% enriched uranium, which experts say could be developed to a weapons-grade 90% within a week or two.

In 2015 Iran signed on to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the U.S., Russia, China and the European Union. The agreement required Iran to slow production of what was then 20% enriched uranium. The JCPOA relied on two verification processes. One was inspections and access; the other was electronic monitoring of activities when inspectors weren’t on site.

In 2018 Mr. Trump kept a campaign pledge to get out of the agreement with Iran and resume tougher sanctions. A 2024 intelligence assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency tells what happened next: “A year later, Iran began expanding its nuclear program beyond JCPOA limits." Iran chafed at meeting requirements unless there was more relief from sanctions. Iran had also suffered from multiple Israeli covert operations, including cyberattacks, explosions and assassinations of its scientists, the report said.

According to reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran didn’t withdraw from the JCPOA agreement but began to slip the knots of its requirements, including by limiting inspections and removing electronic monitors. This year the IAEA accused Iran of operating three other sites that were covert bases for uranium enrichment, to which inspectors had no access. The IAEA reported that Iran had exceeded the agreed limits, quantity of uranium, enrichment levels, the number and types of centrifuges, and the continuing research and development of metal compounds used in missile development. No country without a nuclear-weapons program operates facilities buried under remote mountains and strives for faster centrifuges and more-highly enriched uranium. None of that makes sense for civilian energy programs.

In a remarkable (and surprisingly unclassified) chart released in May, U.S. military weapons experts assessed that by 2035 Iran would have space-launched vehicles to carry conventional or nuclear missiles that could fly orbital paths and reach the U.S. The assessment framed the developing threat as part of the president’s proposed Golden Dome defense system. The U.S. predicted that by 2035 Iran would have 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles—10 more than North Korea is expected to have. Iran has no ICBMs today, but according to the estimate, it has already tested staged rockets and solid fuel for the program.

Those are some of the arguments that likely swayed Mr. Trump to see an increasing threat from Iran. For Mr. Netanyahu and Israel, the threat isn’t halfway around the world or 10 years off. In 2023 Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress that “it would take several months to produce an actual nuclear weapon."

Whether or not Mr. Khamenei gave the order for development of an actual nuclear weapon, there seems to have been little disagreement in any intelligence estimate that the people working underground in places like Natanz and Fordow were getting Iran’s nuclear program ready to deliver a weapon quickly if and when that call came.

Beyond the intel and military strategy, there is the politics of it all. For Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu, there was brinkmanship at play. As Mr. Trump’s chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, was preparing to fly to Oman to continue talks with the Iranians on disarmament, Mr. Netanyahu launched a massive attack on Iran. Having derailed the negotiations and crippled Iran militarily, Mr. Netanyahu asked Mr. Trump to finish the job for him.

His gambit having succeeded, Mr. Netanyahu may go down in history not as the leader who missed the warnings of the Oct. 7 attack but as the leader who delivered Israel from its three greatest threats by crushing Hamas, breaking Hezbollah and eliminating the nuclear threat from Iran. As for Mr. Trump, he could come out as the hero—the hitman who delivered the kill shot to the Iran threat—or as a supporting player in the final scenes of Mr. Netanyahu’s boldest act.

Mr. Miller is CNN’s chief law-enforcement and intelligence analyst. He served as the New York City Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, 2014-22.