Hi, I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get the chance to sit down with our reporters and dig into their coverage of the latest news and events.
Joining me today is Washington Times National Security Correspondent and Threat Status podcast host Ben Wolfgang.
[GERBO] Iran, Iran, Iran. That’s the only thing that seems to be on everybody’s mind across Washington and the world at this point. The president announced a ceasefire. It fits and starts, but I guess you could call it fragile, perhaps tenuous at this current point. What is the status of this ceasefire?
And then, in recapping these bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites, how extensive have they been, and where is the middle ground between what the administration believes was carried out and what some leaks from the Defense Intelligence Agency that have been reported on pretty widely, what they say?
[WOLFGANG] So the ceasefire. For starters, it’s important to remember, and this is kind of crazy to think about, Israel’s air campaign against Iran started just two weeks ago, and the U.S. air strikes, of course, were last Saturday. So this whole thing has taken place in under two weeks, the start of the Israeli campaign, and then the U.S. last weekend entering the campaign. President Trump announces the ceasefire earlier this week and so far, as we’re recording this on Thursday afternoon, so far so good. Of course, Trump had to put a little bit of muscle behind it with his profanity-laden — well, profanity, I shouldn’t say laden, he used one expletive as he sort of excoriated both Israel and Iran — telling them not to engage in any more attacks.
So it looked like this thing was in danger of falling apart in the early hours of the ceasefire, but so far, it’s held. So I think that’s good news for anyone who was worried about this conflict potentially escalating, drawing the U.S. in deeper.
As far as the actual impact of the U.S. airstrikes against Iran, the three nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, that is kind of the $64,000 question right now in all of the military and national security circles, folks that I’m talking to, is exactly what do we know about what was destroyed and how long it would take for it to be rebuilt?
Watch the video to see the full conversation
