And for all the visual drama, the outcomes suggest something more familiar: resilient capability, hardened intent, and a slow weakening of the very architecture designed to contain both.

Meanwhile, the political and normative costs accumulate: erosion of IL, weakening of nonproliferation norms, and the creeping normalisation of preventive force. At some point, we’ll need to ask whether all this performative force is masking a deeper strategic vacuum.

You can damage centrifuges. You can destroy buildings. But no number of GBU-57Bs—or even a sustained air campaign—can eliminate the underlying capacity. And certainly not the intent.

Monitoring becomes harder. Access narrows. Uncertainty grows. A nuclear program is not a static set of facilities or industrial assets—especially in countries where it has been woven into the fabric of national identity over decades.

Worse, these strikes have been tactically short-term and strategically counterproductive. Material, centrifuges, engineering expertise, dual-use infrastructure—none of it vanishes in a fireball. If anything, it gets buried deeper, spread wider, and protected more effectively.

Yet, the most cinematic airstrikes haven’t stopped Iran’s nuclear program. Not even after years of sabotage ops, cyberattacks, and airstrikes. Material, equipment, know-how—possibly undeclared sites—likely all still there. More dispersed, better concealed, and harder to track.

The targeting of civilian nuclear infrastructure persists. As long as such coercive measures remain permissible and normalized, broader efforts to safeguard nuclear facilities in conflict zones will face significant challenges.