Volume 18, Issue 3,
March 3, 2026
U.S. President Donald Trump and senior administration officials have offered conflicting justifications for the renewed U.S. strikes on Iran, including the claim that Iran’s nuclear and missile programs posed an imminent threat to the United States. There is no evidence, however, to support those claims. Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that the Trump administration did not engage in good-faith negotiations with Iran over the past several weeks and exhaust diplomatic options to reach an agreement to limit future risks posed by the nuclear and missile programs.
The absence of an imminent military threat and failure to follow through on diplomatic efforts to address concerns about Iran's sensitive nuclear activities demonstrates that this is a war of choice, waged in violation of international law and without the necessary approval from Congress. It behooves members of Congress to challenge the Trump administration’s justifications for striking Iran and re-assert that under the U.S. Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act only Congress has the power to declare war.
1. Did Iran’s nuclear program pose an imminent threat?
In a Feb. 28 video announcing that the United States attacked Iran, Trump stated that Iran had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program” and that the strikes will “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” But when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, there was no evidence that Iran was engaged in nuclear activities that would pose an imminent threat to the United States. Neither U.S. President Donald Trump nor Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented any evidence of an ongoing weaponization effort and, in a March 2 press conference, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said “we don’t see a structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” in Iran. The following day, in an interview with CNN, Grossi was asked if “the Iranians were days or weeks away from building a bomb.” His response was "no."
Trump also stated that Iran was attempting to rebuild its nuclear program, after the United States and Israel destroyed key nuclear facilities during June strikes (also without evidence of weaponization). Iran has continued activities at nuclear facilities that were unaffected by the June strikes, including the Pickaxe site near the Natanz uranium enrichment complex, which is deeply buried and could, when operational, pose a risk. There are also indications that Iran may be cleaning up or stabilizing some of the nuclear sites that were struck. But there is no evidence to suggest that Iran is resuming proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities, such as uranium enrichment, that would be necessary to produce nuclear material for a bomb.
Israeli and U.S. strikes in June appear to have severely damaged Iran’s two operating uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow, likely rendering them inoperable and therefore unable to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, or 90 percent. Imagery of those sites from the past several months supports the assessment that the sites are not operating.
Iran had declared a third enrichment facility at Esfahan that the IAEA was set to inspect on June 13, but the visit was cancelled when Israel attacked Iran. The agency does not know the exact location and status of that site, although in a Feb. 27 report, the IAEA noted that Iran had recently informed the agency that the Esfahan enrichment facility was impacted by June strikes. That claim, however, cannot be assessed until the agency has access to the site.
However, even if the Esfahan enrichment facility was not damaged, there is no evidence to suggest that Iran is trying to dig up or recover any of 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is near weapons-grade. Enriching that material is Iran’s most straightforward path to fissile material for a bomb. Most of the 60 percent stockpile is likely buried in tunnels at Esfahan.
As a result, if Iran had decided to build nuclear weapons ahead of the Feb. 28 strikes, it would have taken Iran longer to produce a nuclear weapon now than before the June strikes (prior to June 2025 Tehran could have produced enough weapons-grade material for several bombs within a week and build warheads likely within six months).
The June strikes also demonstrate the limitations of miltiary force: strikes cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear program or knowledge relevant to weaponization that Iran acquired as part of its pre-2003 illicit nuclear weapons program. The ongoing attacks cannot, as Trump claims, “ensure” that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons. Iran still possesses a nuclear weapons capability—it has since 2007 according to the U.S. intelligence community—and it will at the end of this current conflict.
The survival of the 60 percent enriched uranium underscores the limits of conventional military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program. According to CNN reporting on a classified briefing for members of Congress after the June strikes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, said that the underground storage areas at Esfahan are too deeply buried for even the MOP to destroy, so the United States did not try to destroy and focused on the tunnel entrances instead. It is also likely that centrifuges survived the strikes—prior to the June attack Iran had the capacity to produce more centrifuges than it installed, and likely storing the machines at hardened facilities.
Furthermore, statements from U.S. officials undermine Trump’s statement that the nuclear risk was a primary driver of the Feb. 28 strikes. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested that the United States struck because Iran was planning preemptive strikes and developing missile and drone capabilities that would form a “protective shield” for Iran to engage in nuclear blackmail.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the United States joined the strikes because Israel had already decided to attack and that the preemptive strikes the U.S. assessed Iran was planning would have been a response to Israeli strikes, not a first strike. “We knew there was going to be Israeli action,” Rubio said and that it would “precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
An unnamed U.S. official on Feb. 28 press call also made clear that there was no imminent nuclear weapons threat. The official said: “The threat from Iran is ultimately their ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, but in the short term, it is the conventional weapon, the conventional missile capability, that they have, particularly in the southern belt, that pose a threat to the United States and our allies in the region.” This suggests that Trump knew there was no immediate nuclear weapons risk.
Furthermore, the opening days of U.S. and Israeli strikes also suggest the nuclear program was not the primary driver of the decision to attack. On March 2, Grossi noted that no nuclear facilities had been struck. Since his comment, it appears that there may have been some strikes designed to block access to Natanz, but it is clear that Iran's nuclear facilities have not been the focus of the U.S. military operation thus far.
2. Did Iran’s missile program pose an imminent threat?
In his Feb. 28 video announcing the U.S. strikes, Trump said Iran has continued “developing the long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland” and the United States needs to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities. Hegseth reiterated on March 2 that the U.S. objective was to "destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their navy and other security infrastructure, and they will never have nuclear weapons." He also said, "Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions." "Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs — Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb." (As explained above, there was no indication that Iran made the decision to weaponize.)
Iran does possess a sophisticated ballistic missile program, with systems that are capable of targeting U.S. military assets in the region, as well as Israel. Iran’s medium-range systems would also allow Tehran to target parts of Europe. Israel targeted Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities, storage depots, and launchers during the June strikes, degrading missile capabilities. Iran also launched an estimated 500 missiles at Israel in response to the Israeli attack, reducing its stockpiles. Since June, Iran has taken steps to rebuild its missile production facilities. U.S. officials have stated Iran was producing 100 missiles a month. Iran has also tested missiles and announced some modest new system capabilities over the past eight months. None of these announcements, however, constitutes such a significant advancement in capabilities to render the missile program an imminent threat.
Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that Iran was on the verge of developing a ballistic missile capable of targeting the United States. In the wake of the negotiation of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran announced a voluntary range limit of 2,000 kilometers for its ballistic missiles. Tehran appears to still be generally adhering to that limit.
For years, the U.S. intelligence community raised the prospect of an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but it never materialized. For example, the 1999 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate predicted that the United States would probably face an ICBM threat from Iran by 2015. A 2025 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take until 2035 or longer for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles if there was a decision to try to do so. The DIA also assessed that Iran would need to make a determined push to achieve those capabilities on that timeline.
Iran is developing satellite launch capabilities, which are applicable to ICBM development, but Tehran would still face technical hurdles if it were to convert an SLV to an ICBM.
The United States has long acknowledged that Iran is improving its missile program without considering it an imminent threat. In the 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment, the intelligence community stated that:
“Iran has fielded a large quantity of ballistic and cruise missiles as well as UAVs that can strike throughout the region and continues efforts to improve their accuracy, lethality, and reliability. Iran’s defense industry has a robust development and manufacturing capacity, especially for low-cost weapons such as small UAVs.”
But then it concluded that “the limited damage Iran’s strikes in April and October 2024 inflicted on Israel highlights the shortcomings of Iran’s conventional military options.”
Iran did inflict more damage on Israel during the June 2025 strikes. However, the ability of Israel, the United States, and other states in the region to intercept the vast majority of Iran’s incoming missiles and drones highlights the limitations of Iran’s conventional missiles.
Furthermore, it would be dangerous and destabilizing to set the precedent that the mere possession of ballistic missiles constitutes an imminent threat and is a justification for military action.
3. Did the United States and Iran exhaust nuclear negotiations? What was the status of talks at the time of the Feb. 28 strikes?
Trump has claimed that Iran was not serious about reaching a nuclear deal and renouncing nuclear weapons. Accounts of recent diplomatic efforts suggest, however, that the Trump administration did not exhaust the negotiating process or engage in a good-faith effort to compromise.
The United States and Iran met three times in February for talks mediated by the Omanis. The third round of talks was held Feb. 26 in Geneva, and a subsequent round of technical meetings was scheduled for the week of March 3.
During the third round of talks, Iran presented a proposal to the United States. Tehran has not made the proposal public but reporting from the talks and an interview by the Omani Foreign Minister on Feb. 27 suggest that Iran was willing to agree to a years-long pause on enrichment, implement “broad” verification measures, and not accumulate enriched uranium. After a pause, the proposal reportedly called for a uranium enrichment program scoped to fuel reactors Iran planned to build, according to its 10-year nuclear development plan. According reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Iran assessed it would need 30 cascades of advanced IR-6 centrifuges enriching uranium up to 20 percent, a level suitable for research reactors.
The United States reportedly proposed a longer enrichment pause followed by a ‘token’ enrichment program and permanent, free nuclear fuel supplies. It is unclear how the United States pledged to ensure fuel supply, given the legal and technical challenges of exporting and certifying fuel. It is also unclear what monitoring provisions the U.S. negotiating team asked for as part of the deal.
Following the Feb. 26 negotiations, Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi told CBS News that the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal and said that an agreement is “within our reach.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the talks made progress but urged the United States to “drop its excessive demands.” He said the talks concluded with the “mutual understanding” that the United States and Iran would “engage in a more detailed manner on that matters that are essential to any deal.”
However, U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to be dissatisfied with the progress and said on Feb. 27 that he was “not happy” about the way Iran was negotiating. The next day, the United States and Israel struck Iran.
In a subsequent press briefing from U.S. officials involved in the Feb. 26 negotiations, which took place after the strikes, an unnamed official said Iran was not serious about reaching a deal and that it “makes absolutely no sense” for Iran to enrich uranium. He also said Iran would not discuss its ballistic missiles and stated that Iran was capable of producing centrifuges (a capability they have long had). The comments suggest a lack of technical expertise in understanding the Iranian proposal.
Although the scope of the post-freeze enrichment program described by Iran was politically not acceptable for the United States and inflated when compared to a realistic assessment of Iran’s needs and reactor deployment, Tehran’s willingness to pause enrichment and not accumulate uranium gas suggests Iran was demonstrating flexibility. It is also unlikely that Tehran put its final offer on the table on Feb. 26 and would have accepted a smaller enrichment program in the final deal. With intrusive monitoring, an effective nonproliferation agreement could include a limited uranium enrichment program.
The U.S. decision not to engage on the Iranian proposal and meet on March 1 for technical talks makes clear that the Trump administration did not exhaust the diplomatic options before resorting to preventive strikes. It raises the question if, yet again, the United States was negotiating in good faith.—KELSEY DAVENPORT, director for nonproliferation policy