By Noah Rothman
Friday, May 08, 2026
We now have a better understanding of why Project
Freedom, a Trump administration initiative in the Strait of Hormuz designed to
neutralize the Iranian threat and get maritime traffic moving again, was
abruptly aborted within 36 hours of its announcement. The reason? The Saudis
wanted to teach the White House a lesson, and so reportedly imposed temporary
restraints on the U.S.
To recap: Over the weekend, following a prolonged period of
relative quiet, commercial shipping in the strait once again came under Iranian
fire. Within hours, the administration announced its intention to clear
navigable channels in the strait. To demonstrate U.S. resolve, two
cruise-missile destroyers transited the waterway, drawing Iranian fire in the
process. But, as they had during Operation Epic Fury, Iran’s field commanders
also lashed out omnidirectionally, launching missiles and drones at targets
inside Gulf states like Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
America did not respond. Rather, it spent the following
24 hours dispatching high-ranking administration principals — the secretary of
state, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
— to explain why Project Freedom was a strategic and moral imperative to which
America was wholly committed. Hours later, however, the president announced
that the imperative would have to wait. A deal with Iran was supposedly in the
offing. So, for the time being, the strait would remain closed.
It was an inexplicable sequence of events before U.S. media outlets uncovered the impetus for Trump’s
inconstancy. The Saudis restricted American access to their airspace and bases
temporarily, allegedly to communicate Riyadh’s displeasure with America’s
failure to respond proportionately to Iranian attacks on Gulf states. But
following unspecified assurances from the American side, the Saudis (and
Kuwaitis) subsequently lifted those restrictions. Not only was
Project Freedom back on, but U.S. warships also transited the strait again on
Thursday. And when those vessels took fire from the Iranian side, American
forces retaliated with airstrikes on Iranian targets on the Islamic Republic’s
shoreline.
There is clarity in this chronology. The Saudis continue
to deny that any of this took place as it has been reported,
but what we can see with our own eyes is more compelling than their denials.
That experience is worth keeping in mind as Americans
evaluate reports alleging that the intelligence community believes that Iran’s
offensive military and nuclear capabilities have not been significantly
disrupted despite the unprecedented drubbing Tehran absorbed over the 40-day
war.
“U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that the time
Iran would need to build a
nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer,” Reuters reported this week. After the June 2025 strikes on
Iranian nuclear facilities, American intelligence agencies estimated Iran’s
window to break out with a fissionable device was pushed back from three to six
months to nine months or, perhaps, a year. And yet, despite the hundreds of
strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, nuclear science community, and heavy
industry during the campaign that began on February 28, the intelligence
community’s assessment remains unchanged from last year.
We have no reason to doubt that such an assessment was
presented to the president, although it’s unclear if that is one intelligence
agency’s view or the product of a synthesis of analyses across the U.S.
intelligence community. But the evidence before us should also inspire
skepticism toward that assessment’s conclusions.
In a response to the Reuters report, analysts with the Institute for Science and International Security (yes,
ISIS, but the “good”
one) were incredulous. They itemized the number of complex, expensive
facilities that were damaged in the war. They detailed the loss of “know-how”
(as opposed to “knowledge”) about nuclear-weapons manufacturing that had been
neutralized. They observed that Iran’s uranium stockpiles are “bottled up in
sites where any movement can be easily detected.” And they reached a very
different conclusion.
“Recent media reports of the U.S. intelligence community
finding that the second phase of the war did not set back timelines for Iran to
build nuclear weapons do not accord with the visible damage of nuclear
weaponization facilities and require both more explanation and scrutiny,”
ISIS’s experts declared. Indeed, the difficulty Iran will face in attempting to
break out with a bomb could dissuade the Iranians from even making the attempt.
“That real risk of failing to successfully build a nuclear weapon may be a
deterrent against deciding to try,” the report closed.
But what about Iran’s missile production and launch
capabilities? Those, too, are largely intact, according to publicly reported
American intelligence assessments.
According to the CIA, Iran still maintains about 70
percent of its pre-war missile stockpile, and roughly three-quarters of its
mobile missile launchers remain operational. The allegations were reported in
both mainstream and conservative media venues, and there is, again, no reason
to doubt that such an assessment was provided to the president. But the
conclusions in that assessment also merit scrutiny.
At the outset of the war, a general consensus maintained that Iran had about 2,500 ballistic missiles in its arsenal. According to
General Dan Caine’s assessment on April 8, as the current cease-fire was
struggling to take hold, U.S. and Gulf-region forces intercepted about 1,700 ballistic missiles — most of which were fired in the earliest days of the war. That is to say nothing of
the dozens of missiles that slipped past the West’s defenses and reached their
targets.
In addition, Caine said that 450 ballistic missile
storage facilities had been destroyed, and 80 percent of Iran’s missile production facilities had been
disabled — limiting Iran’s near-term capability to rebuild its stockpiles. As
for launchers, Caine assessed that the “majority” of Iran’s “launcher
vehicles” had been destroyed. Still, that would leave Iran with hundreds of
operational or recoverable launchers, as well as thousands of missiles
(particularly the short-range and cruise varieties) that could be brought back
online.
That isn’t too far off from what U.S. intelligence
allegedly assesses. And yet, the
pattern of Iran’s launches during the war — which opened with a massive
salvo but soon thereafter slowed to a trickle — suggests that it’s one thing to
have missiles but quite another to deploy them against hostile targets in
combat successfully. The Islamic Republic maintains a ballistic missile
deterrent, yes. But if hostilities were to break out again, U.S. and Israeli
forces would do what they did during the war: target the facilities they
monitor from afar, strike launchers that emerge from their hiding holes, and
frustrate Iran’s ability to deploy its formidable arsenal in a strategically
coherent fashion.
It’s not that these intelligence assessments are
inaccurate. As reported in the press, however, their emphasis on the degree to
which Iran’s capabilities can (or, perhaps, should) deter further U.S. and
Israeli action is not supported by the evidence presented. That assumes the
intent of these leaks was to dissuade Trump from carrying out his threats
against Iran. Maybe the point was merely to embarrass the president and to advance the conclusion favored by some within this administration that the United States gains nothing by
securing its interests overseas via force.
Either way, we should be skeptical of intelligence
assessments that are presented to the public as an airtight basis for a
particular public policy. There is an advocate for that policy preference on
the other side of those leaks. And when those assessments don’t comport with
the facts in evidence, our skepticism is more than warranted.
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