Froma Harrop

Let me offer some rare praise for Donald Trump. His attack on Iran’s nuclear development sites was carefully executed. Nobody outside a tight circle knew about it in advance. And he was wise in shifting the talk into calls for peace.

We don’t know whether the bunker busters reached all the near-bomb-grade uranium or if other sites for fuel enrichment remain hidden. But analysts believe the Iranian nuclear program has been turned back years.

Israel had been degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but it didn’t have the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators needed to blast deep inside the mountains housing Iran’s nuclear program. Only the United States had the bombs and the B-2 stealth bombers to deliver them without detection.

The action was justified by the signs that Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon. It would have raised not only the threat to Israel but also the region by setting a nuclear arms race among Sunni Arab nations at odds with Shiite Iran.

There have been contradictory reports on how far Iran had gone in building a bomb. Respectable sources, like CNN’s John Miller, persuasively argue that it is on the cusp of having a weapon of mass destruction. Miller had been the New York City Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.

Whether Iran was currently building a bomb was not a precondition for the U.S. operation. Miller wrote that “the intelligence estimates suggest Iran’s posture on being ready to make a bomb never looked more aggressive.” No civilian energy program, he added, “operates facilities buried under remote mountains and strives for faster centrifuges and more-highly enriched uranium.”

It would have been comforting had someone other than Pete Hegseth had been in charge of the Defense Department and put in front of the cameras after the U.S. strike. The talking head from Fox News was shockingly unqualified plus a blabber mouth having spread classified information in a Signal group chat. For the latter reason, some believe that Hegseth wasn’t even told much about the impending action.

Israel should lead in prosecuting the war. Iran started it long ago through its employment of proxy forces — the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. By running the attacks from outside Iran, the ayatollahs spared their own country from counterattack.

Iran shares much blame for the human tragedy in Gaza. It paid Hamas to build tunnels in Gaza to protect its fighters while turning innocent civilians into martyrs exposed to Israeli counterattacks.

Israel’s war against the Iranian regime rightly remains Israel’s war. It’s clear why Israelis are dead set against letting Iran get a nuclear bomb. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called for the “elimination of Israel.”

Israel and Iran should be friends. The two peoples go way back, to at least since 586 BC, when Jews arrived in Persia after the Babylonian Exile. Many Jews left when the ayatollahs took over, but Tehran remains home to several synagogues.

Many have questioned the motives behind Trump’s decision to send the U.S. military after Iran’s nuclear program. Some hold that this was basically another distraction against the increasingly controversial immigration raids and his troubled “big, beautiful” tax-and-spending bill.

Others say that Trump, upon observing great admiration for Israel’s “brilliant” precision strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and scientists, needed to grab back the spotlight with some spectacular action of his own. He went so far as to take credit for Israeli successes.

America did what was needed. Trump’s “now is the time for peace” statement was welcome. We should step back unless Iran retaliates. The Israelis have a wide intelligence net in Iran. They know what they are doing. As for the fighting, the U.S. should now step aside.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.