On Monday, Reuters reported that US intelligence estimates regarding Iran being only one year away from a nuclear weapon had not changed much since last year’s 12 Day War with Iran, despite the recent Operation Epic Fury (Roaring Lion) this year.
Some media outlets are putting this information out in ways that attempt to question whether the wars were worth it.
While that question might be more debatable from an American point of view, from an Israeli point of view, both wars were clearly worthwhile.
Prior to June 2025, Israel had faced two potential, relatively imminent existential threats from Iran: its nuclear weapons and the growth of its ballistic missile arsenal beyond a volume that Israel could handle on defense.
In June, Israeli and US attacks on dozens of Iranian nuclear facilities pushed back the Islamic regime’s nuclear program from a matter of months away from a nuclear weapon to between one and two years away.
How to quantify the 2026 Iran war?
The recent US-Israeli operations have now pushed Iran back from its arsenal of 2,500 ballistic missiles – and an uninterrupted path to achieving an additional 3,700 to 4,300 missiles within six months, and up to 4,900 to 6,100 within a year – to between a mere several hundred to a maximum of 1,000 missiles and a delay of multiple years for producing a new large volume of missiles.
So why does the US intelligence report say what it says? And why are so many analysts up in arms about the implications?
Part of the answer is due to US President Donald Trump conveying inaccurate messages about the recent war’s most achievable goals. Messages, incidentally, which were quite different from what IDF officials were emphasizing in their war messaging.
Trump emphasized how the war would end Iran’s nuclear weapons threat. The IDF emphasized the ballistic missile threat and de-emphasized the nuclear issue.
This was not just about messaging.
American forces hardly bombed a single Iranian nuclear site during the around 40 days of war this year.
Israeli forces bombed several thousand important targets before finally attacking one nuclear site on the fourth day of the war this year.
In other words, despite the messaging, the targeting makes it clear that Iran's nuclear program was not the focus of the 2026 war like it was in June 2025.
This was for a very simple reason: Iran did not progress with its nuclear program after June 2025.
Many of the critics who say nothing was achieved against Iran’s nuclear program in June 2025 had predicted that the Islamic regime would produce a nuclear weapon within three months of that war.
Nearly 11 months later, Iran has made zero concrete progress toward restoring its hammered nuclear program, and the few unimportant nuclear sites that it was trying to get going more recently were struck during this recent war.
If almost a year after the 12 Day War, Iran is still around one year from a nuclear weapon according to US intelligence, that pretty much fits Israel’s earlier predictions, that the Islamic regime would not be able to field a nuclear weapon before summer 2027 at the earliest, and even that would only happen if it pushed hard to do so and was not stopped.
Another point that has confused observers is that Iran still has two major remaining nuclear assets: over 400 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium and the new Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility. But when critics discuss these nuclear assets as if this leaves Iran close to producing a nuclear weapon, they are either being disingenuous or are confused.
A mix of defense sources and open sources has made it clear to The Jerusalem Post that most or all of that 60% enriched uranium is deep under the rubble of the Isfahan nuclear facility and likely also under rubble at the Fordow or Natanz nuclear facilities.
Iran has made efforts to approach that uranium, but after 11 months has not succeeded.
The Islamic Republic, therefore, does not “possess” the uranium, and it is not clear whether it could obtain access to and control over it within a short period of time, even if there were no Israeli and American pressure on the issue.
Even if the Islamic regime could succeed in eventually getting to that uranium, Israeli and US intelligence know exactly where the spots are and have the capability of striking the Iranians exactly as the uranium was being removed from the area.
If Iran was able to remove it, assumptions that from that point (not from now, when the Islamic regime does not actually have the uranium in hand) it could potentially produce a nuclear weapon within a year – assuming that the Islamic regime succeeded in rebuilding centrifuges, specialized nuclear hemispheres, warheads, shock wave generators, and other detonation platforms, as well as delivery vehicles (after all of its dual-use satellite related programs have been bombed in 2026) without being stopped and minus most of their top nuclear scientists who were killed in two rounds over the last year.
None of this means, however, that Israel and the US can go to sleep at the wheel.
A high watch must be kept on the nuclear rubble sites.
Iran cannot be allowed to remove the uranium from those spots.
If Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility, which has been under construction since 2021, finally becomes operational, it will need to be carefully watched and may need to be attacked.
Nevertheless, no one should have any doubt that two existential threats have been pushed off by some years by these two wars.
Broader hopes that Iran’s Islamic regime might fall – or that at least it would be compelled to give up its enriched uranium and freeze enrichment for an extended period – have not yet panned out and may not pan out.
And whether the 2026 war was “worth it” from an American perspective is a trickier issue because of the hammering that the American economy is taking over the Strait of Hormuz standoff.
Yet from the Israeli perspective, pushing off two distinct existential threats for a period of years, even without fully resolving them, has been a critical security achievement, even if the broader goals emphasized by the political class have not come to pass.
