IRAN DEAL RENEWS QUESTION: WAS THIS WAR NECESSARY? It is perhaps the most fundamental question of the Iran war. If the goal of the war was to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and if the U.S. attack of June 21, 2025 either obliterated or substantially damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, and if additional targeted bombing could have finished the job of destroying those facilities, why was it necessary for the United States, along with ally Israel, to go to full-scale war against Iran at the end of February 2026, targeting a broad range of targets, assassinating the country’s supreme leader as well as other key figures, and setting off further war and an economic debacle that may or may not be resolved by the current peace negotiations?Why not just destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, keeping the option to strike again if, or when, Iran makes progress reconstituting them? It’s a question President Donald Trump and top administration officials have never fully answered. After the 2025 bombing, Trump famously said that special U.S. bunker-buster bombs had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. There followed immediate intelligence leaks suggesting that was not true. One such leak said the bombing had set back Iran’s programs just a short time, perhaps as little as three to six months. Other assessments said it had been set back one or two years. In retrospect, it appears that the bombing set Iran back at least one or two years and possibly more, especially when one considers the damage done to some of the key elements required to make and deliver a nuclear bomb.