Can the ceasefire survive?

When United States President Donald Trump sent American bombers to attack Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, he was counting on helping Israel weaken Tehran's nuclear program while fulfilling his long-standing promise not to drag the United States into a protracted war.

Just days later, Trump's surprise announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran suggests that he may have used the bombing to force the rulers in Tehran to return to the negotiating table, Reuters reports.

However, a long list of major unanswered questions remains, most notably whether any ceasefire can actually take effect and survive between two bitter enemies whose years-long conflict has escalated into an air war marked by mutual attacks over the past 12 days.

Claim of permanent peace immediately denied

Despite Trump's statement that Israel, on his orders, had halted its attacks to preserve the newly established ceasefire, explosions echoed in Tehran yesterday as Israeli airstrikes hit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed that Israel had targeted a radar station near Tehran, saying it was in response to Iranian missiles fired three and a half hours after the ceasefire was due to take effect.

Trump, en route to a NATO summit in the Netherlands, criticized Israel, using an expletive in an unusual move against an ally whose military campaign he had joined just two days earlier. “All planes will turn around and return home, with a friendly ‘air salute’ to Iran. No one will be harmed, ceasefire in effect!” Trump wrote on his social media account. It followed a previous tweet in which he said: “Israel. Do not drop bombs. If you do, it is a serious violation. Bring your pilots home, now!”

Trump's ceasefire announcement came just hours after Iran fired missiles at a US air base in Qatar, causing no casualties, in retaliation for the US dropping bunker-buster bombs on Iran's underground nuclear facilities over the weekend.

Trump administration officials assessed that Iran's response on Monday was carefully measured to avoid further escalation with the United States, informed sources told Reuters.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said yesterday that Tehran will not violate the ceasefire agreement unless Israel does so, Iranian state media Nournews reported. “Tehran is ready to negotiate and defend the rights of the Iranian people at the negotiating table,” Pezeshkian said.

It remains to be seen whether the ceasefire will hold, and even if Trump manages to restore it, his bold claim on Monday night that he had secured a lasting peace and that “Israel and Iran will never shoot at each other again” was quickly refuted, the British “Guardian” reports. Still unknown, and not mentioned in Trump’s enthusiastic social media post announcing the imminent “complete and comprehensive ceasefire,” are the terms the two sides have agreed to; whether the US and Iran will resume failed nuclear talks; and the fate of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, which many experts believe may have survived the US and Israeli bombing campaign.

Where is the enriched uranium?

The fate of Iran's nuclear program and the United States and Israel's attempts to destroy it, according to the Financial Times (FT), could depend on more than 400 kilograms of uranium in Iran, enriched to a level just below military grade.

After US bombers dropped bombs on the Islamic Republic's main nuclear facilities, Trump declared that "key facilities for the enrichment of nuclear material have been completely and thoroughly destroyed."

There is no doubt that the sites used by Tehran to produce highly enriched uranium have suffered serious damage.

However, as the Trump administration conducts damage assessments, the key question will be whether Iran's program has been destroyed or merely pushed into smaller, secret facilities that are harder to detect.

The answer, according to the FT, depends largely on what happens to Iran's stockpile of 408 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, which is very close to the 90 percent threshold needed to make a nuclear weapon.

“It all comes down to the material and where it is,” Richard Nephew, a former senior US official who worked on Iran in the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations, told the FT. “Based on what we’ve seen so far, we don’t know where that material is. We’re not confident we’ll be able to find it anytime soon.” “I think it would be foolish,” he added, “to say that the program has been delayed by more than a few months.”

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said that “nobody will know for sure for days” whether Iran tried or succeeded in moving highly enriched uranium, but added that “I doubt they moved it, because at this point, nothing can really be moved.” “As soon as a truck starts moving, the Israelis see it, they shoot it and destroy it,” Rubio said.

However, an Iranian regime insider said it would be “very naive if we kept our enriched uranium at those sites,” adding: “The enriched uranium is now intact.”

A stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent would mean that Tehran has the capacity to produce enough fissile material to make multiple nuclear bombs within days, if it so chooses.

However, the process of converting this material into a weapon, according to experts, would take months, even up to a year.

The risk has always been that after Israel launches a bombing campaign under the pretext of destroying Tehran's nuclear program, Iran could secretly move supplies to hidden locations, where advanced centrifuges were already secretly installed.

Nefew said that “all these unknowns are killing us a little bit.” “If they have a uranium conversion facility ... and if they were able to enrich it to 90 percent at Fordow before it was attacked, and they had eight or nine days, that’s potentially enough for two 90 percent bombs,” he said.

India, Pakistan, and North Korea have successfully developed secret nuclear programs despite strict oversight and restrictions imposed by the US.

Sima Shain, a former Iran expert at the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, said she was convinced that Iran had moved the enriched material. “They have enough enriched uranium somewhere, and they have moved some of the advanced centrifuges somewhere, to allow them to one day get a nuclear weapon,” Shain said. “The program is not completely destroyed, no matter what the Americans say.”

An Israeli official said that if Tehran and Washington resume talks on allowing Iran to have a peaceful nuclear energy program, Netanyahu could insist that Tehran hand over all its highly enriched uranium, which would then be transported and stored outside the country.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said that the US bombing likely caused "very significant" damage to the underground parts of Iran's uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, although no one can yet precisely determine the extent of that damage.

"At this point, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to fully assess the damage caused to the underground parts of the Fordow facility," Grossi said in a statement at an emergency meeting of the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors.

Trump's big risk

As for Trump, his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities marked a step he had long vowed to avoid, military intervention in a major foreign war.

In the biggest and potentially riskiest foreign policy move of his presidency, Trump calculated that he could not only destroy Iran's key nuclear facility at Fordow, but also that it would only provoke a measured response from Tehran against the United States.

There were fears that Tehran could respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil corridor, attacking multiple US military bases in the Middle East, and activating its allies against US and Israeli interests around the world.

If Trump manages to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran, he could calm the storm of criticism from congressional Democrats and appease the anti-interventionist wing of his Republican MAGA base, which opposes the bombing.

It would also allow him to refocus on political priorities like deporting undocumented migrants and waging a tariff war against trading partners.

However, Trump and his associates will not be able to ignore Iran and the questions that remain open, Reuters estimates.

“Can the ceasefire hold?” asked Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator in both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Yes, the Iranians need it, and the Israelis have largely already acted on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) list of targets.”

However, obstacles remain. “Iran has been seriously weakened, but what is the future of its nuclear and ballistic programs? What will happen to its stockpile of highly enriched uranium? Negotiations will be needed, and they will not be easy,” Ross said.