Ambassador Oren: Trump May Be Remembered as ‘Greatest Peacemaker’ of 21st Century
Once a target of an Iranian assassination plot, the former Israeli diplomat called the US strikes a game changer. Drawing on his own experience with Iranian threats, including an ongoing cyberattack, he warned Iran may target sites abroad.
Soon after carrying out strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday, President Donald Trump posted online that the facilities had been “completely and fully obliterated.” Yet Iranian state media has reported that the uranium located at the highly fortified Fordo enrichment facility was moved prior to the strike, suggesting that the Iranian nuclear threat may persist.
In an interview with The Media Line’s Felice Friedson, former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren urged Americans and Israelis to take that claim seriously and recognize that solving the nuclear threat may still require diplomacy. “While you can destroy Fordow, you can destroy these other nuclear facilities, the issue of the stockpile can only be addressed in negotiations,” he said. “Because you can’t blow it up without creating, or at least creating the danger of a mass casualty event. And we have to be very cautious about that.”
While Israel and the US have disabled Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, Iran is believed to still possess 408 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% and 276 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20%, Oren said. He added the intelligence gathered by Mossad agents in 2018 suggests that the country has continued developing a warhead.
If you have 650 plus kilograms of enriched uranium, that can go into a warhead, that work and can be on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, you’ve got yourself a nuclear-armed Iran.
“If you have 650 plus kilograms of enriched uranium, that can go into a warhead, that work and can be on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile, you’ve got yourself a nuclear-armed Iran,” Oren said.
He noted that the recent strike marked the first time the United States joined Israel in offensive military operations. “Never before has American forces joined shoulder to shoulder with Israeli forces in attacking a common enemy,” he said. “This is indeed a common enemy, and that’s the major point here, that the Iranian regime threatened not just Israel and the Middle East, but it threatened the United States—and beyond the United States. It threatened the world.”
Leading up to the strike, Oren said he had become skeptical about whether the US would attack Iran at all, especially as American public support waned and divisions deepened within the MAGA base.
He called the strike a potential “game changer, not just for Israel,” adding that President Trump might be remembered as the “greatest peacemaker of the 21st century.”
“You’re talking about a completely different Middle East, a transformed region, which was inconceivable before this operation, inconceivable,” Oren said. “And beyond that, globally, President Trump’s move sends an unequivocal message to the Chinese. I imagine there are people thinking in Beijing tonight that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to make a move on Taiwan. And there are people in Moscow thinking, maybe we should rethink our rejection of American offers of mediation in the Ukraine war.”
While a brighter future may lie ahead, for now, Israelis continue to face retaliatory strikes from Iran. “It’s clear that Iran will continue to fire missiles at us as long as it has that missile firing capacity, both the launchers and the arsenals,” Oren said. “And I know our forces are working assiduously to deny them those launchers and arsenals. But you know, it doesn’t take many Iranian ballistic missiles to paralyze this country, to keep students out of school, to keep businesses closed, to keep tourists away, keep Israelis from traveling abroad. You only need 10, 15 a day, because they’re quite, quite big.”
The question remains how long Iran can sustain this campaign, particularly regarding its missile arsenal. Israel initially estimated Iran to have about 2,000 ballistic missiles but has since destroyed roughly half of them.
Oren characterized the conflict as a “classic war of attrition.” “Both sides leave room to escalate,” he explained. “Now, we have plenty of weapons up our sleeve that we haven’t used yet. You haven’t heard about Israeli submarines being used, you haven’t heard about our long-range ballistic capabilities being used. We’ve mostly air force and some ground forces, some Mossad ground forces, but we’ve left room to escalate.”
Iran, too, has left room to escalate, he said. He described the recent Iranian attack on Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center as an escalation.
“Iran used a warhead that had cluster bombs in it, which was designed with one purpose only, and that’s to kill people, large numbers of people,” he said. “So that’s a clear escalation. But they could go further.”
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Iran may also have additional weapons that Israel isn’t aware of, Oren said.
Overall, the potential for further Iranian escalation looms large. According to Oren, such escalation might include attacks on the approximately 40,000 American troops stationed across the Middle East or attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil supply passes.
By attacking an American military base or firing an American warship, you drag America in deeper, and that deepens the divisions within the American society and puts pressure on the president to end the war.
Oren suggested that if Iran is running out of options, it may try to provoke direct US intervention. “By attacking an American military base or firing an American warship, you drag America in deeper, and that deepens the divisions within the American society and puts pressure on the president to end the war,” he explained. “And then he puts pressure on us to end the war, and that’s what Iran would want. So I can conceive a situation where Iran would, in military terms, call in an airstrike on its own position, and the airstrike would be an American airstrike on an Iranian position in order to create political shockwaves in the United States.”
This could also take the form of missile attacks on Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, Oren said.
Beyond the nuclear threat, Oren warned of the risk that Iranian agents might carry out terror attacks worldwide. “It would be in Iran’s interest to do it probably in the United States, not in Europe, and against Jewish targets, and that they have to be very extremely vigilant for Jewish communities around the world, including the United States, about the possibility of Iranian terror attacks,” he said. “This is a regime that has not hesitated to attempt to conduct such attacks, sometimes successfully as in Argentina, twice.”
Oren himself has been a target. During his tenure as ambassador, Iran attempted to assassinate him, he said.
In a vivid illustration of ongoing cyber warfare, Oren was interrupted during the interview by phone alerts—he had fallen victim to an Iranian hacking attempt, with dozens of fraudulent letters sent out under his name seeking information from public figures and journalists.
It’s a classic antisemitic trope. But what you haven’t seen before is the almost complete confluence of such charges, both on the progressive left of the Democratic Party and on the isolationist, anti-Israel, sometimes antisemitic, right of the Republican Party.
He warned that the ongoing internal divisions in the United States could exacerbate antisemitism globally. “What you’re going to see now is, again, claims that Israel has dragged America into a war, that Israel controls American foreign policy, that Trump is basically a puppet,” he said. “It’s a classic antisemitic trope. But what you haven’t seen before is the almost complete confluence of such charges, both on the progressive left of the Democratic Party and on the isolationist, anti-Israel, sometimes antisemitic, right of the Republican Party. If you look at the statements made by Bernie Sanders on one side and by Tucker Carlson on the other, they’re almost identical.”
Though such rhetoric fuels antisemitism, he said, it does not necessarily bolster Iran.
“The question is, how long lasting will these charges be? And will they impact, in the short or the long run, the fundamental commitment of the United States to the US-Israel strategic alliance, which is key?” Oren asked.
While the war has divided Americans, it seems to have united Israelis. Oren explained that the conflict with Iran was long a politically unpopular one due to its intangible nature. “Trying to convince Israelis of the existential nature of the Iranian threat was always difficult, because it was so abstract,” he said. “You couldn’t see it. You can see a Syrian tank. You can even see a Hamas or Hezbollah rocket, but you couldn’t see the Iranian nuclear threat.”
In addition to being abstract, the Iranian threat is also technologically complex, further decreasing its popularity as a political issue. “Go explain why 3.4% was a big difference between 20% and 20% enrichment wasn’t a big difference between 60% or 60% was a very small difference between 60% and 90%. And what is the difference between an IR-1 and an IR-6 centrifuge? Deeply, deeply technical,” Oren said.
He recalled the backlash that resulted from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first threat to use military force against Iran back in 2012. “The entire security establishment, the Mossad, the IDF, and the media came out against him, Oren said.
After the October 7 attacks, the Israeli political calculus changed. “What Israelis understood after October 7 is that we cannot afford to have threats build up on our border without our responding,” Oren said. “And we understood that the threat of Hamas and Hezbollah, which we had allowed to build up, would be immeasurably worse with Iran. We also understood that Iran was behind this. We understood that Iran was the trainer and funder of Hamas and Hezbollah. We understood that. So there was no question about the justice of the war and the necessity of the war.”
Asked about reports that American intelligence did not believe Iran was close to a nuclear weapon, Oren said that Israel and the US tend to interpret the same intelligence differently. “When I was in government, I was in the highest level discussions for the United States about the Iranian nuclear program. And we looked exactly at the same information, the same aerial photographs, the same intelligence reports. We had the same conclusions about where the Iranian nuclear program was, where there were huge differences,” he said.
With the United States, a country that’s not threatened by nuclear annihilation by the Iranians as far away, the margin of error was much bigger. Our margin of error vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program was exactly zero.
He explained that the stakes for Israel if it underestimates Iran’s ability are drastically different from the stakes for the US. “With the United States, a country that’s not threatened by nuclear annihilation by the Iranians as far away, the margin of error was much bigger,” he said. “Our margin of error vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program was exactly zero.”
Some critics have faulted President Trump for engaging in this conflict after withdrawing from the original Iran deal, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in his previous term as president. Oren pushed back on this criticism, tracing the roots of the problem to what he called the “original sin” of former President Barack Obama’s unilateral concession of Iran’s right to enrich uranium.
“Iran had been illegally, criminally enriching for years, and President Obama gave Iran a pardon and actually sanctified that criminality. And then you had an agreement that didn’t dismantle any part of the Iranian nuclear program anyway, which meant that though the Iranian stockpile had been reduced by 98%, though the cap had been put on enrichment to 3.4%, it meant that the minute Iran decided to replenish the stockpile and enrich to 60%, it could, it was just a decision away,” Oren said. “There was no physical barriers to it.”
He noted the deal failed to prevent Iran from developing advanced centrifuges, barely addressed missile or warhead development, and was set to expire automatically in 2025.
What’s more, by lifting sanctions and thereby enriching Iran, the JCPOA “financed October 7,” Oren said.
Until the Iranian threat is finally addressed, Israelis, including Oren, are still living in fear and under fire. But Oren emphasized the impressive resilience that Israelis have shown despite the situation. “This morning, I’m sitting in our safe room with my family, my wife, and the booms are very close. So you have the feeling of what it’s like to have been a resident of London in 1940 during the Blitz. And this is every night. And we hear these booms getting closer and getting louder. And we know that even being in a safe room, there’s no guarantee that if you’re building, it sustains a direct hit, nothing’s going to affect you. This is 200 pounds of TNT, enough to take down a block, a city block,” he said. “So yes, there is fear. But what’s remarkable is that between the sirens, Israelis are out on the beach.”
“We are very resilient. We are tough as nails,” he continued. “And then the bigger question: we are the Jewish state, and what is Jewish history but a chronicle of resistance and resilience? We are here. And that is the greatest testament to any people’s resilience. You’re not going to find anything like it in the world.”
