Washington Week with The Atlantic

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, let's start with a little etymology.

Obliterate comes from the Latin obliterare, which originally meant to blot out or erase letters or words.

Today, the main use of the word obliterate is to describe what did or did not happen to the Fordow underground uranium enrichment plant, 125 miles south of Tehran when it was bombed by the United States Air Force.

For reasons we will discuss tonight, President Trump believes it very important to claim that the operation against Iran's nuclear program was an unalloyed, absolute complete victory, requiring no follow through.

The truth is it's actually much too early to come to definitive conclusions about the damage done.

Joining me tonight to discuss Trump, Netanyahu, Khameini, and the true state of affairs in the Middle East post-attack are Shane Harris, who covers intelligence and national security for The Atlantic, David Ignatius is a columnist at The Washington Post, Andrea Mitchell is the chief Washington and foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, and Ashley Parker covers the White House for The Atlantic.

Thank you all very much for being with us tonight.

David, I want to turn to you first to give an overall assessment, but let's listen to Donald Trump talk about talk about the attack, Saturday.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: The U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime.

The strikes were a spectacular military success.

Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, benefit of the doubt here for a minute.

For 25 years, the United States, Israel, Sunni Arab States, Europe, have been warning that it's untenable to allow the Iranian regime to have nuclear weapons.

They've been looking for ways to stop the program once and for all.

A lot of people are secretly happy and some openly happy that Donald Trump did what he did.

Is there a chance or a good chance that Donald Trump actually did the thing that for 25 years the west has wanted to see happen?

DAVID IGNATIUS, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, he attempted it, which is something in itself.

He actually went ahead and took the strike.

You have to say, whatever the final bomb damage assessment, it was an extraordinary use of military power halfway around the world, something that no other country could do or really even could think of doing.

So, I think that's a first thing to say and it does send a message to the world about American power that will persist, you know, well beyond this strike.

The reason that it matters exactly what the bomb damage was is that that will condition what now follows.

And if it was obliterated for years to come, that makes it easy for Trump because the Iranian nuclear program really is gone.

You don't have to worry about follow-on negotiations.

You don't have to worry about removal of equipment.

You don't have to worry about a whole series of issues.

You don't have to think about how you enforce an agreement because you don't need an agreement.

It's obliterated.

But if it's short of that and the evidence is, it is something short of totally obliterated, then a series of questions arise about how you'll make sure that Iran never gets that nuclear weapon.

And Iran will have much more desire to have one now after this war than it even than it did before.

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, that's why these questions matter and you know, we're just at the beginning of this, for Trump to treat this as a matter of semantics, and I must say for some in the media to do the same, really misses the point.

This is about the future, how much destruction of the program happened.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Shane, maybe you can just walk through this for a minute, give us the granular look at the state of the Iranian nuclear program now based on the initial battle damage assessment.

SHANE HARRIS, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

So, it's important to keep two things in mind when talking about this.

There is the highly enriched uranium, which is the core ingredient that you need to create the weapon.

There is some question about whether those stockpiles have now been removed and secreted somewhere.

And then there are the centrifuges, which you need to enrich that uranium to its state where it can be a bomb.

So, the places where Iran was enriching that we know are heavily damaged.

Forget, you know, obliterate, totally obliterated.

It's not binary.

Significant damage done to them.

Fordow was the one that buried underneath the mountain.

Maybe a little bit harder to tell.

Natanz is the other major facility.

The Israelis had been hitting that as well.

That's got more visible damage around it.

And the IAEA, the international inspectors, you know, attest to that, that appears that these two facilities have been significantly damaged.

There's a third facility at Isfahan.

This is also very important to the construction of the uranium.

That appears to be significantly damaged.

This is not to say that Iran cannot make a bomb, but these three places that are central to that have sustained some serious damage.

The question now is, can Iran take that 408 kilograms, about nearly half a ton of highly enriched uranium, and get that into centrifuges?

Are those centrifuges up and running somewhere?

Are they stored somewhere where they could be put into use?

These are kind of the really next key tactical questions and the Israelis and the United States will be watching that very closely to see if there's activity related to that.

But these key components in these facilities that the U.S. and the Israelis have been striking have obviously been damaged and will create an impediment for some time.

How long it would take Israel to rebuild this is the thing that people are debating right now.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Andrea, what's your assessment?

ANDREA MITCHELL, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News: That according to European intelligence, according to the IAEA and others, that some of it was moved to other locations and not necessarily to Isfahan and Natanz, but to other undisclosed locations, which is one of the big issues.

What Iran has never explained is why it needed to enrich to 60 percent, that is just below weapons grade.

It then has to go through several steps, and that's why the breakout time was for a nuclear, you know, capability, but not a weapon, because they still have to turn this enriched uranium into a small, into small metallic pellets, if you will.

It then has to be weaponized into and miniaturized into a warhead, unless it's going to be some sort of a dirty bomb.

So, there was still other steps, but it was not anything that they would've needed for a civilian program, which is what they claimed they needed.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And so they were vulnerable.

And the issue now is, is Israel going to go back in on whatever pretext if they feel that this has not been completely destroyed?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, the other question is, would Donald Trump go back in and -- I mean, there is Trump rhetoric and then there's intelligence reality.

If the United States intelligence community, if the Israelis say, you know what, we didn't completely destroy Fordow, is this a one and done for Donald Trump, or do you think a month from now, three months, six months, he would actually go around and do this again?

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, I think it is unpredictable, because, in fact, on June 13th, it was not at all predicted that he would go in when the Israelis first did.

There was considerable pressure from the Saudis and others in the Gulf not to do this on him and to try to come up with some other result.

And, in fact, my own interpretation, and I defer to Ashley, who has covered him far longer and more intensively, is he saw the success of the Israeli operation, which was remarkable.

You know, the air defenses were gone.

They went in, they developed air superiority.

Soon, it became -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And they assassinated most of the military leadership within the same hour frame.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Military and political leadership.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And scientists.

ANDREA MITCHELL: So, their targeted assassinations have been with Nasrallah, with Hamas, with, you know, all the proxies, and now with Tehran itself, Central Tehran.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Wait, are you suggesting -- and Ashley obviously can give us more insight on this, are you suggesting that Donald Trump bombed Iran because Israel was successful and he wanted a part of that excitement?

ANDREA MITCHELL: I think that you can infer that that is part of it.

And they had this plan that was on the shelf that had been rehearsed.

We knew it was rehearsed last in August of '23.

And this had been worked on for 15 years, as General Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chief said, which was the only, you know, military briefing that was not purely political in contrast to the defense secretaries.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Ashley?

ASHLEY PARKER, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: So, there's a lot of elements at play, obviously, right?

Of course, one is he's watching the success of Israel.

That's an aspect of it.

Another, and this did not come up in meaningful ways in Situation Room discussions, but is that Iran had attempted it was very clear Iran wanted to assassinate President Trump, and that really affected the Trump campaign.

They had to change what they did.

At one point, they sent Trump on a decoy plane and they left sort of presumably more expendable and certainly more alarmed staff on Trump Force One when there was this threat of Iranian assassination.

So, it has been described as very top of mind, but not actually a part of the decision-making process.

And as Andrea said, it is, of course, unpredictable that is sort of inherently evergreen for Donald Trump.

But I do think the one and done doctrine to the extent that Trump has a doctrine is illustrative because you can go back and for the strike on Syria in his first term, for going after Soleimani, the strike on him, for a brief strike on ISIS.

And talking to Trump officials, they said people misunderstand him as isolationist or anti interventionalist.

What he prefers are these sort of short bursts of kinetic energy.

So, people were confused at first why he would get involved, but he doesn't see this as being drawn in to a forever war in the Middle East.

He sees this as a one and done, or maybe one and done and then another one.

And that's how you -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: After a suitable period, where people have forgotten the previous promises.

ASHLEY PARKER: Yes.

He dips in, he dips out.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: David, what are the chances that, and I want to get into this strange bipolar relationship he has with the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, yelling at each other one day, loving each other the next.

DAVID IGNATIUS: Dropping not just, you know, the bunker buster, but the F bomb.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Dropping the F -- right, dropping the most powerful weapon in the Trump arsenal.

The -- I want to get into that in a minute.

But I'm curious.

It seems unlikely that Donald Trump is going to go revisit the scene soon in a kinetic way, that he's not going to go to Fordow next week and say, well, I got to clean this up, so I got to drop another few bombs.

Do you think he'll let Israel do it if Israel decides in a month or two that, oh there's still things that need to be destroyed?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, the Israeli defense minister has already announced that Israel will have a policy of enforcement, meaning if Iran tries to rebuild, Israel announces that it will come back in and knock it down again.

I think the opportunity for Trump is to build a relationship with an Iran that really has submitted, has agreed to a new nuclear deal.

And, you know, that's a win on a level beyond the bombing of Fordow.

That's a real change in modern history in the Middle East.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That sounds great, but this is not a guy who likes really intense multi-month negotiations on highly technical issues.

DAVID IGNATIUS: Absolutely.

And, you know, he has such a tiny team.

They're so obviously overstretched.

If he's going to do this, he needs a group, a task force that will follow through.

I heard it suggested that maybe Jared Kushner, who knows the Middle East, would be the person to lead this group.

That's hard to imagine in some ways.

But if he's going to remain serious about, you know, this biggest commitment of military power he's ever made, he's going to need more people to do the follow through.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The only reason that it's not farfetched that Jared Kushner will soon be parachuting into Tehran to negotiate a nuclear deal is that nothing is farfetched anymore.

But go ahead, Andrea.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Yes.

I just think that Jared Kushner is deeply invested, literally, in some very big projects, including in Belgrade and elsewhere around the world, and that there's a lot at stake.

That is perhaps even bigger to him than this.

But the other piece of it is the Abraham Accords, and that is what they're now talking about.

But I think there is a naivete about that, that they would like to complete what they started and that it was a really important legacy of the first Trump term is beginning to have recognition of Israel by Arab states, but they need to get the Saudis.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

In fact, the proximate cause of the Hamas invasion that set everything off was Hamas' desire to stop Saudi Arabia from recognizing Israel.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Precisely.

And so now they think, well, is there a way to, you know, resurrect that?

And my reporting from a lot of Arab sources is that there is not, not unless they deal with Gaza.

ANDREA MITCHELL: They have to deal with Gaza.

Gaza is being starved.

This food delivery system has been discredited everywhere, despite the State Department now pouring $30 million into it as of this week.

And it is more than 400 children have died by any account in just trying to get food, plus adults.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, in other words, the road to the Abraham Accords runs not through Tehran, but it runs through Gaza.

ANDREA MITCHELL: The Saudis are insisting that something be done right, and even something about some kind of Palestinian state, and that is something where Donald Trump has, you know, failed to persuade Netanyahu.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to talk a little bit about the way in which this administration deals with crises and talks about crises.

Let's watch Pete Hegseth get into an argument with one of the best Pentagon reporters we have in the press court, Jen Griffin from Fox, over what I interpret as a straightforward question.

REPORTER: Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow Mountain, or some of it?

Because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance.

Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?

PETE HEGSETH, Secretary of Defense: Of course, we're watching every single aspect.

But, Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who misrepresents the most intentionally.

What the president says -- REPORTER: I was -- HEGSETH: I'm familiar.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) of the ventilation chefs on Saturday night, and, in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy.

So, I take issue with that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Ashley, why are they like this?

Why can't he just answer the question, open question, normal question, where's the highly enriched uranium?

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, first, I was struck by, it goes back to the way Trump is insisting on this be described, which is your original question of how are they talking about crises.

And with Trump, everything is always superlative, right?

It couldn't just be, we set Iran's nuclear program back significantly, and we're still waiting to understand the nuances, as David articulated, it's that it was totally obliterated.

So, he sets a superlative line where anything short of that is disloyalty, right?

So, the facts are now immaterial to sort of this semantic debate.

And then for Pete Hegseth, which, again, it's just worth stating that that is a wild response to a very basic question.

He is performing to save his job.

He's had a lot of missteps.

In many ways, he's been cosplaying the role of defense secretary.

Trump likes him.

He likes him from Fox News.

He likes that he's tough.

But that is something where Hegseth, like a lot of people in this administration are so clearly performing for an audience.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: He doesn't seem that tough.

I mean, it wasn't even a tough question from a great reporter, but it was a straightforward question.

And he -- David, he seemed to lose his cool.

DAVID IGNATIUS: It was thoroughly unprofessional.

The job of defense secretary is, in a lot of ways, the most important management job, short of the president in the world.

And he behaved, you know, like a defensive, skittish, angry, impulsive person.

It's so striking to contrast him as defense secretary with the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, who, throughout this, has behaved responsibly, like a real military leader, whose response to this was not to talk about himself or be defensive, but to talk about the soldiers and airmen who'd done the attack, the people who'd spent 15 years, as you said earlier, getting ready, designing the weapon, designing the concept, the people at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, who were responsible for shooting down the missiles.

You want to talk about, you know, all the troops.

It was such a contrast.

And at the time when the military has this really erratic leadership in Hegseth, it was good to see that the top military leader uniform is a responsible person.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And Jennifer Griffin is superb as a reporter.

And it was just -- it was so offensive, but it's also that the president should not be coming out within an hour or so of this strike and saying, we obliterated.

There was no battle damage assessment.

ANDREA MITCHELL: He should probably say, we will wait for an assessment, but the early reports are very positive, something that would be more professional, getting back to your first word of oblitare.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Obliterare.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, excuse me.

My next my high school Latin fails me.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Our next episode will be totally in Latin, but go on.

ANDREA MITCHELL: But just using that word is a political word.

And with General Caine, as David was just saying, was he was being very precise and professional.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You know what struck me as interesting about these this, these superlatives and this exaggeration.

I'll read you a recent tweet from Ayatollah Khamenei.

This is after he's come out of whatever bunker he was in.

My congratulations on our dear Iran's victory over the U.S. regime.

The U.S. regime entered the war directly because it felt that if it didn't, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed.

It entered the war in effort to save that regime, but achieved nothing.

Like that's nonsense talk, but it's nonsense talk from an authoritarian fundamentalist regime.

I am just continually surprised that there's not more sophistication in the communication about real life events from this administration, from the senior most people in this administration.