One of the main reasons behind the Trump administration’s decision to go to war with Iran was the objective of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and eliminating its ability to do so. After more than five months of strikes, political and intelligence assessments differ over the results of the confrontation. While decision-makers in Washington insist that the strikes were effective and severely damaged Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, reports suggest that the war may have slowed the country’s nuclear program without bringing it to a halt.
The war has entered a difficult phase in which military objectives and complex geopolitical calculations have become increasingly intertwined. The key questions are: What is the place of the nuclear issue in this war? And to what extent have the latest military developments contributed to changing the nature of the conflict? Against this backdrop, global attention has gradually shifted from Iran’s nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment activities toward the Gulf waters and the Strait of Hormuz.
In 2025 and 2026, airstrikes on Iranian infrastructure revealed a complex reality on the ground and highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the country’s nuclear developments:
In Isfahan, where Iran stores a significant share of its enriched uranium (around 60%, or approximately 970 pounds, enough for nine to ten nuclear weapons) the facility sustained significant damage in June 2025. However, reports from the “Iran Nuclear Watch” indicate that the storage facility itself remained intact.
At the Natanz facility, which includes major underground enrichment facilities, the damage appears to have been concentrated in the above-ground structures and entrances. Nearby, the Jabal Fa’s project is buried deep beneath the rocks, raising questions about the extent to which the strikes affected Iran’s underground enrichment capabilities.
At Fordow, Iran’s most heavily protected and advanced nuclear facility, a major strike involving 12 bombs penetrated its defenses in June 2025. The attack buried the facility’s four entrances under rubble and temporarily rendered some of its facilities inoperable. Despite the damage, however, Tehran is believed to have retained sufficient hidden stocks of uranium.
The course of the crisis between the United States and Iran has undergone a radical shift. The Iranian nuclear program has become less central in the strategic calculations of both sides, while a new issue has emerged as a major source of leverage for Tehran: the waters of the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran realized that its response to the military operation could not be limited to the nuclear field. It had to extend beyond the nuclear issue and target what lies at the heart of the global economy: the flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz. This shift is reflected in the remarks of Iran’s Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who said that Iran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the United States changed its behavior.
This Iranian stance was not merely a passing remark. It was accompanied by a set of strategic demands that shifted the course of negotiations toward an agreement on the administration of the Strait. The Iranian leadership stipulated that Tehran must not be threatened again and called for a permanent end to the war, the lifting of the blockade on Iranian ports, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region, and “full compensation” for the damage caused by the war. It also demanded the lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets “without conditions.”
From an analytical perspective, this suggests that the U.S. pressure and the military campaign pursued by the Trump administration failed to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Instead, they pushed Tehran to shift the arena of conflict and bargaining from the enrichment facilities to the front lines of global economic and energy security, with the Strait of Hormuz at the center. Thus, the U.S. administration finds itself facing two major challenges: securing the flow of global oil and ensuring freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, while also containing Iran’s nuclear program and preventing it from being revived.
According to the temporary agreement signed in June 2026, the final agreement was expected to include a timeline for lifting sanctions, a compensation plan, and negotiations over Iran’s frozen assets. However, Iran’s resistance pushed the nuclear issue into the background of the political negotiations, while the U.S. administration has yet to provide a decisive response to Tehran’s demanding conditions.
The Future of the Nuclear Program
Despite President Trump’s insistence last April that his administration had “wiped out” Iran’s nuclear program entirely, the reality on the ground offers a starkly different and concerning picture for the international community. Balanced statements by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi confirm that military strikes indeed severely set back and eroded the program, but he explicitly warned that “once the military effort is over, we will still inherit a number of major issues that were at the heart of all this.”
The conclusions drawn from the course of the conflict show that military operations and airstrikes have slowed down Iran’s nuclear program but failed to destroy it radically, as Tehran maintained a sufficient stockpile of high-enriched uranium within its damaged facilities in Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow, keeping its underlying capabilities alive. Against this field reality, the political landscape witnessed a dramatic shift represented by the nuclear file receding to second place behind urgent negotiations over maritime security and the Strait of Hormuz.
Consequently, the major strategic paradox lies in the fact that the international community’s preoccupation with the Strait crises and the lifting of sanctions creates a “smoke screen” and an absence of strict UN oversight, providing Iran with an ideal environment to rebuild and develop its nuclear capabilities sooner or later. Rather than leading to the complete eradication of the program, the war now threatens an even more perilous reality where Tehran’s possession of a nuclear weapon becomes merely a matter of time.