Rand Paul Exposes the Failures and Fallout of Trump’s Dubious Iran Bombing

Republican Senator Rand Paul has thrown cold water on Donald Trump’s self-congratulations over the bombing of Iran, suggesting the operation may have fallen far short of the success the MAGA crowd claims.

The inconvenient truth is starting to emerge.

“Look, nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but I think it’s still unknown what the result of this will be,” Paul said during an interview on the far-right streaming platform Real America News. “Will Iran capitulate and say, ‘Never again, we’re going to behave, we want to be part of the community of nations’? Or will Iran respond by sprinting toward building a nuclear weapon?”

It bears remembering that Donald Trump unilaterally tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement President Obama signed with Iran. By all credible measures, that deal was working—Iran was not enriching uranium for weapons. But Trump shredded the accord to spite his predecessor’s legacy, broke America’s word, then blamed Iran and launched strikes.

“There are news reports out today saying that 400 kilograms of enriched uranium at 60% purity were moved out before the attacks,” Paul continued. “I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it’s being reported. There’s also the question of whether centrifuges were removed or whether there are other hidden sites.”

NBC News has confirmed that the “extent of the damage to the deeply buried facility at Fordo,” as well as the sites at Isfahan and Natanz, is still unclear. The same reporting noted that roughly 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium remains “publicly unaccounted for.”

“I’m not sure you can bomb away the capability to build a nuclear weapon,” Paul added. “It only takes about 40 kilograms. If they took 400 kilograms, they’ve got enough for maybe ten weapons, and that material could be hidden almost anywhere. So we’ll see what happens. I hope they won’t pursue a nuclear weapon. I hope the war won’t continue.”

He went on: “But I guess I base my judgment on the past misadventures of so many presidents, from Obama to Bush, overseas—operations that didn’t go as planned and cost a lot of lives and resources unnecessarily.”

Even Trump’s own Vice President, J.D. Vance, has hinted that the strikes failed to achieve their objectives:

“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel, and that’s one of the things we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” he told ABC News.

If those nuclear sites and stockpiles had been fully destroyed, there would be no need for such negotiations. Something isn’t adding up—and while Donald Trump rushes to his next distraction, the rest of us are left hoping this precarious ceasefire holds.