When we last recorded Saturday night, the U.S. had just announced its strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The U.S. had entered the war. The restrainers had seemingly lost.
In the following hours, President Donald Trump said the mission was a “spectacular military success.” And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the program “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites.
But there’s much more to that story than meets the eye. As Jay Solomon wrote in our pages: Before the U.S. struck, 16 cargo trucks entered the fortified mountain complex and moved unidentified equipment to another location. Are the sites destroyed or merely damaged? Was enriched uranium smuggled out? It all remains unclear.
Now the war is heating up. Israel has expanded its bombing campaign beyond nuclear facilities to hit regime targets. Qatar has closed its airspace. And just as we write this, Iran has reportedly fired toward Qatar and Iraq.
It all begs the question: Was the strike on Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant the end of this war—or just the beginning? And what comes next?
To understand the state of the nuclear facilities and the state of the war, we’ve brought together three of the most well-read experts: Michael Oren, Jay Solomon, and Matti Friedman.
Oren is the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. He served from 2009 to 2013. He is also a former Knesset member. He is the author of many books, including Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide.
Solomon is an investigative journalist who has covered Iran and the region for decades. He just published an explosive piece for The Free Press titled “Did Iran Just Sneak Out Critical Nuclear Material from Fordow?”
And, Friedman is our Jerusalem-based columnist, and the author of four books, including his latest, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. He just wrote “After the Bombs: American B-2s Just Changed the Middle East. Now It’s Time to Return the Region to the Humans Who Live Here” for our pages.
We’ll note we recorded this Monday morning, starting around 11 a.m. ET, as a Free Press Live event. To join these, you just need to do one thing—and that’s become a Free Press subscriber.
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1:17:27
The U.S. Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Program
On Saturday night at 7:50 pm ET, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. had entered the war against Iran when he posted: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
In the minutes after this historic announcement we assembled six of the top experts on this issue: Haviv Rettig Gur, Michael Doran, Mark Dubowitz, Amit Segal, Eli Lake, and Matt Continetti.
We discussed it all: what we actually know about the strikes; what it means for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, how Iran might respond; why Trump struck now; what this means for the Middle East; and what Trump’s national address signalled to the American public, to Israel, and most importantly to Iran.
We'll note we recorded this Saturday night starting at 8:30 pm ET as a Free Press live event, and we will be hosting more in days to come.
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1:50:09
Niall Ferguson and Dexter Filkins: Who Will Win the Israel-Iran War?
It’s the fourth day in the war between Iran and Israel.
Many questions hang in the air. Chief among them: Will Israel be able to fulfill its main goal in the war—to end Iran’s nuclear program? Will it put troops on the ground to do so, specifically to blow up Iran’s most important nuclear site? Or will the U.S. get involved? Will Trump provide the bunker-busting bombs necessary to destroy the facility at Fordow?
Will the regime fall—and if so, what will come next? How does this struggle fit into the much, much larger geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China?
So today, I have two experts to break it all down: Niall Ferguson and Dexter Filkins.
Niall Ferguson is a historian and Free Press columnist who just wrote in our pages, “Israel’s attack restores the credibility of the West.” Dexter Filkins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has reported from Iran. He is a contributor at The New Yorker, has covered this topic for years, and is the author of The Forever War.
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1:09:56
Iran Strikes Israel, Oil Fields Ablaze, and Will the U.S. Enter the War?
As we taped this episode of Honestly, it was 3 a.m. in Israel. Sirens wailed across the country as Iranian missiles rained down on Israeli towns.
At the same time, Israel was striking military and nuclear sites inside Iran, and oil fields were aflame.
Meanwhile in Washington, reports were emerging of a heated debate inside the White House over whether the U.S. should get involved in the war.
It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of this story—or how uncertain the outcome is for Israel.
There’s no one better to help us make sense of this war than Michael Doran—senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.
This has been his story not just for the past few days—for the last decade, no one has written more, and more brilliantly, about Iran’s nuclear aspirations and Washington’s posture toward Iran than Mike.
And he just wrote for The Free Press “The Ultimate Deception: How Trump and Bibi Outfoxed Iran.”
We recorded this interview Saturday evening at 6 p.m. as a Free Press subscriber livestream. We’re doing more of these given the speed of the news. To attend one live and ask your own questions, become a Free Press subscriber.
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1:22:14
Naftali Bennett and Michael Oren: Israel and Iran at War
In the early hours of Friday morning, Israel pulled off a historic strike on Iran. As I record these lines, Iran is reporting a “massive explosion” in Isfahan, in a province that is home to several nuclear facilities. In Israel, where Shabbat has begun, the government has ordered all synagogues to shut down—and for citizens to remain close to bomb shelters as they brace for a retaliatory strike.
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this operation. Israel has taken out much of Iran’s military leadership and some of its top nuclear scientists and hit nuclear facilities across the country. And it is still going. Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to do whatever it takes in order to prevent a nuclear holocaust.
Meanwhile, the X account for Iran’s military has threatened that “our response will be lethal.” And the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has tweeted: “The Zionist regime has prepared for itself a bitter, painful fate, which it will definitely see.”
Donald Trump, for his part, is using this as an opening to push Iran into a nuclear deal. This is a historic juncture for the region—not just for the state of Israel, but for the West.
So last night, just as the news of these attacks broke, I sat down with former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren and former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett to discuss all of it: the strikes, what they accomplished, how Israel defied conventional wisdom and seemed to pull off the impossible, what we can expect in the days ahead, and—perhaps most importantly to many of our listeners—whether or not America is supporting Israel in its efforts.
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The most interesting conversations in American life happen in private. This show brings them out of the closet. Stories no one else is telling and conversations with the most fascinating people in the country, every week from The Free Press, hosted by former New York Times and Wall Street Journal journalist Bari Weiss.
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