the United States military conducted an air strike on Iran's nuclear weapons program over the weekend striking three nuclear facilities iran responded today by firing at a US military base in Qatar the largest installation in the Middle East iranian officials gave warning before firing the missiles signaling a more symbolic strike than an actual escalation in conflict at least at this point the FBI is warning of the possibility of Iran retaliating here on American soil some members of Congress including New Jersey Congresswoman and gubanatorial candidate Mikey Cheryl criticized America's air strikes saying the US should have engaged in diplomacy instead some are calling for the impeachment of President Trump which has brought criticism from members of both parties since the president does have the authority to carry out a targeted strike like this republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Chidarelli spoke out in support of the attack calling the president's actions the right move but what comes next i'm joined by Michael Bole an associate professor of political science at Ruckers University to add some clarity michael Bole great to have you with us tonight uh want to talk to you about the impact of the strikes that we saw over the weekend what do we know right now about whether we actually have decimated Iran's nuclear capabilities well the short answer to that is it's not quite clear so both US and Israeli intelligence have suggested that we've done substantial damage probably set the facilities the nuclear production nuclear weapon probably three years back two years back something along those lines the real question is whether Iran was able to move some of their important material in advance of the strike so for example um there is evidence to suggest that they pulled out some of the highlyenriched uranium enough that they would be able to make a bomb some of the fuels they weren't able to remove centrifuges because they're essentially fixed to the floor very difficult to move so it's not quite clear to me that this strike though it is obviously a very large strike they probably set the back two to three years actually got rid of all of their material it's also an open question about whether there is a fourth facility we know there's been three facilities they've been focused on bord up being the one that drew the most attention because it was really the US that did that strike um but Iran has been talking about for a while that they're building a fourth facility so to the larger question about whether we've actually eliminated Iran's nuclear weapons program my estimate is probably not certainly set it back two to three years force them to move some materials but the real open question to me is whether there's a fourth facility that's probably deep underground that hasn't been struck so much of this attack was the element of surprise and capabilities that we had to reach underground bunkers how now do we assess given that there is no more element of surprise iran is prepared um how do we assess the damage very difficult to do so there are I'm sure there are teams on the ground from probably both Israeli intelligence and US intelligence is attempting to work through what has been happening and there's also been an attempt to study essentially what the facilities look like what parts of the facilities were destroyed whether there's any evidence for example of radiation leaks or whether there's anything we can tell about the nature of the explosion on the basis of what we heard after the strike itself yeah but it's going to be a long-term process to kind of reconstruct exactly how much damage was done to Iranian nuclear facilities i mean to be clear it this absolutely will set them back two or three years it's going to be difficult for them to kind of very quickly recover but it's going to be a long-term intelligence question about whether this is a sort of devastating blow that takes them four to five years back or whether this is the sort of thing that they can recover from in maybe a year or two years that's the interesting question i think in the meantime folks here at home our our leaders in Washington are watching to see what type of retaliation might come iran has promised retaliation and uh we know that there there's risk to folks o abroad folks in military bases overseas what are the potential risks that we face here in the United States and overseas so overseas I think is probably the greater risk than in the domestic United States although of course you can't rule anything out um Iran has a number of different options the first and most obvious option it would do would be to use local militias where it has deep links for example a group like Hezbollah to strike US military bases probably in Iraq um that's certainly something they would be able to do they have the capacity to be able to do this for a long time they were building what was known as the Axis of Resistance which essentially was you know Syria as well as a collection of militias in various countries that were essentially assets for them that they could turn on like a switch when they wanted to so the obvious thing for them to do would be to strike US forces and a lot of the signaling you're seeing out of Washington is about saying don't do it that if you do it that we'll continue to strike and that will be to your disadvantage the other possibility they have is they could close the straits of Hormuz now that's very important from an oil shipping point of view um it will affect the world price of oil and something about 20% of the world's oil goes through the straits of Hormuz that Iran essentially controls the interesting part about that is if they were to do that that would really if they shut the shipping down entirely or even just the oil shipments down that would actually hurt China more than the United States because the US has diversified away from the Middle East largely to suppliers of Mexico and Venezuela so so it wouldn't directly affect supply but it would probably push price up what is the potential of this escalating you mentioned that the the United States has warned if you attack any of our military bases we will escalate does this have the potential to draw in some of our enemies Russia China and at what point does Congress need to get involved i know that's a multi-art question but what is the risk of this escalating there is a very clear risk of this escalating on the grounds of number one we haven't knocked out the nuclear facility so you could see a situation where the US says we've actually discovered there is a fourth facility we're going to have to go strike that or Israel will try and do the same thing israel is continuing the attacks today to kind of degrade the military infrastructure the second reason from escalation comes from just kind of incoherence on US war plans are we aiming to degrade their facilities or to do regime change and it depends on what you read from what part of the administration from Trump's Twitter account or something else that gives you very different answers and that actually makes escalation more likely because the other side can't gauge your war aims in terms of Russia and China I think both of them have a limited ability to shape this on the ground russia is belleaguered in the Ukrainian war china generally is reluctant to get involved in a shooting war in the Middle East both would prefer stability both would prefer the regime to survive both are worried about the consequences of this kind of escalating across the Middle East but I don't see them directly getting involved all right Michael Bole we will be continuing this conversation as all of this unfolds thank you so much for being with us tonight thank you for having me