Iran is closer than ever to acquiring an atomic weapon. How will President Trump handle the threat?

How close is Iran to getting a bomb? 
It could be just months away. Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, reported in December that Tehran was “dramatically” accelerating its production of 60 percent enriched uranium—a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. The regime already has enough near-weapons-grade fuel for up to a dozen bombs, according to a recent U.S. intelligence assessment. Turning that material into a warhead to be fitted atop a ballistic missile might take 18 months; a cruder bomb that could be hidden in a cargo ship, for example, might be completed in about six months. Iran insists it has no interest in such weapons and that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. But U.S. and Israeli officials suspect that after a year of military humiliations—Iranian proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen have been devastated by Israeli assaults, and Iran’s close ally in Syria, dictator Bashar al-Assad, has been toppled by rebels—the Islamic Republic may have decided that its survival depends on acquiring an atomic bomb. “When good things happen, like Iran being weaker than it was before, there are frequently bad things lurking around the corner,” said Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser. 

When did Iran start pursuing nuclear weapons?
In the 1990s. But its clandestine nuclear program only became public in 2002, when an Iranian dissident group published secret documents detailing a vast uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water plant in Arak. Iranian officials said the facilities had no military dimension, and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, claimed in 2003 to have issued a fatwa banning the possession and use of nuclear weapons. Western leaders were skeptical, and in 2006—about the same time the regime began covertly building the Fordow enrichment plant in a mountain near the holy city of Qom—the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions were eased under a 2015 deal negotiated in part by the Obama administration, under which Iran agreed to enrich uranium to only 3.67 percent for the next 15 years and transferred 97 percent of its already enriched uranium to Russia. But in 2018, then-President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international agreement, which he called a “disaster” and “the worst deal in history.” 

What happened next?
Trump reimposed sanctions, crippling Iran’s economy. He had hoped that Tehran would beg for a new deal and possibly end its military expansionism in the Middle East. Instead, Iran ramped up its nuclear program: It began enriching uranium to 20 percent in early 2021, and a few months later enriched to 60 percent for the first time. After the long-running shadow war between Iran and Israel erupted into open conflict last year—with Iran firing missiles and drones at Israel, and Israel retaliating with airstrikes—a top adviser to Khamenei warned that Iran “will modify its nuclear doctrine” if faced with “an existential threat.” President Biden was presented last month with options for a potential U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities should the regime push ahead with building a bomb, U.S. officials told Axios. The incoming Trump administration must now decide on how to counter the threat. 

What will Trump do?
The president-elect has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he doesn’t want an Iranian nuclear breakout on his watch, sources told The Wall Street Journal, but also wants to avoid all-out war with Iran. Trump’s aides see two ways to achieve those goals. The first, which some are calling “coercive diplomacy,” involves ramping up sanctions and raising the military pressure on Tehran by sending more U.S. forces to the Middle East and selling advanced weapons to Israel. There are some signs that Iran might be open to talks: It approved Lebanese proxy militia Hezbollah’s November cease-fire deal with Israel and is keen to protect its crumbling economy from further damage. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian “hopes for equal-footed negotiations regarding the nuclear deal—and potentially more,” Iranian Vice President Javad Zarif recently wrote. But Iranian officials have said they won’t negotiate under pressure and won’t unilaterally curtail their nuclear program. 

What’s Trump’s second option?
Help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Israel—which views the program as a mortal threat—has already softened up potential targets. Its Oct. 26 airstrikes eliminated most of the air defense systems around Tehran and key nuclear sites; took out a facility that makes ballistic-missile fuel; and hit a small nuclear research site. U.S. assistance would be needed to fully destroy the program. The Fordow enrichment site is deep inside a mountain and is vulnerable only to the U.S.’s biggest bunker buster, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which would need to be dropped by an American B-2 bomber. Another bunker buster would be required to hit the underground Isfahan research center, where Iran is thought to store nuclear material. “Anything can happen,” Trump said last month of confronting Iran. “It’s a very volatile situation.” 

Which course will he choose?
It depends which voices in his administration prove more influential. Trump has nominated several Iran hawks to his Cabinet, including Marco Rubio, his pick for secretary of state. But his administration will also contain more-isolationist officials, such as Vice President–elect JD Vance, who has said that war with Iran is “very much” not in America’s interest. Yet Israel appears confident that Trump will have its back if it chooses to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. “It looks very, very, very good,” said Jacob Nagel, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser. “I think for the first time, I’ve crossed the 50-yard line on the question that [Trump] might even join us in something with Iran.”

Trump’s revenge 
There’s one personal reason Trump might side with the hawks: Iran plotted to kill him. Trump’s campaign announced in September that the then-GOP nominee had been briefed by intelligence officials on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him.” Soon after, Trump threatened to blow the Islamic Republic “to smithereens,” and the Biden administration said it would consider an attempt on Trump’s life an act of war. In October, the Iranian government said it would not try to kill Trump. The next month, the Justice Department charged Farhad Shakeri, an alleged Tehran-based “asset” of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with orchestrating a murder-for-hire plot against Trump. Prosecutors said the IRGC wanted Trump dead to avenge the killing of its Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who died in a Trump-ordered drone strike in 2020. That Iranian murder plot, said a member of Trump’s transition team, “certainly influences everybody’s thinking when it comes to what the relationship is out the gate.”

If America’s top doctor gets his way, six-packs of beer “may soon look more like cigarette packs,” said Francisco Velasquez in Qz.com. In a 22-page health advisory published last week, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy noted that alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of cancer—behind only tobacco and obesity—responsible for about 100,000 cancer cases a year and 20,000 deaths. To curb that toll, Murthy wants Congress to require cigarette-like cancer-warning labels on alcoholic beverages, and for public health officials to reconsider recommended daily limits. Numerous scientific studies have shown that even “moderate drinking”—defined as one drink a day for women and two for men—can increase the risk of multiple types of cancer, including breast, mouth, and throat cancers. The evidence is clear that “less alcohol is better than more,” said oncologist Jalal Baig in MSNBC.com. Women who have two drinks a day, for example, have a 4 percent higher risk of breast cancer than those who have one a week. Imagine how many thousands of lives could be saved if Americans were more aware of these dangers? 

This is “stealth alcohol prohibition in the guise of an anti-cancer campaign,” said Ronald Bailey in Reason. Drill down on Murthy’s numbers and you’ll find that moderate drinking contributed to only 0.6 percent of all cancer deaths last year. And yet despite this minimal impact, our “national health scold” hints in his report that he’d support hiking alcohol taxes to curb drinking—all “for our own good, of course.” Murthy has “left-wing antidotes” for every problem he encounters, said Allysia Finley in The Wall Street Journal. He called for tech companies to censor Covid “misinformation” and pushed for universal pre-school to help parents cope with the stresses of raising children. “Given this record, why would anyone take his latest warning about alcohol and cancer seriously?” 

Because alcohol is “America’s favorite drug and its most dangerous,” said Dr. Luis E. Seija in Stat News.com. In emergency rooms, alcohol is “the invisible force behind trauma cases, the culprit in new diagnoses of liver cirrhosis.” Outside hospitals, it destroys careers and wrecks families. Yet even though some 30 million Americans are addicted to the stuff, alcohol “has escaped the stigma of being labeled as a drug,” in part because the booze industry has successfully peddled the myth of “responsible enjoyment” and repeatedly killed legislation to curb excessive drinking. “Murthy is right.” We have a drinking problem. “It’s time we sober up.”

Simone Biles made one of the most dramatic comebacks in sports history, said Stephanie Apstein in Sports Illustrated. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the gymnast withdrew from multiple events after developing a case of “the twisties”—a vertigo-like condition that meant she didn’t know where she was in the air or how she’d land. Biles, who’d won four golds at the 2016 Games, was quickly swamped with hate on social media. “Everyone’s like, ‘You’re a quitter!’ ‘You suck!’” says Biles, 27. “And then I was like, Maybe I’m weak.” 

She now believes her Tokyo twisties resulted from past “mental trauma,” including brutal training regimens and sexual abuse by national team doctor Larry Nassar. Returning home, she remembers “feeling broken a little bit. Because it’s what I love to do, and now I’m so terrified.” But Biles managed to find the joy in gymnastics again and last summer took three gold medals and a silver at the Paris Olympics. A reprise in 2028 looks doubtful. “I’m at a point in my career where I’m humble enough to know when to be done.” She’s not sure what retirement will hold, but thinks it will give her a chance to fully absorb her legacy. “I see a glimpse of it, but I don’t think I’ll realize ’til maybe I look back in a couple years, like, Damn, she was good.”