The Strikes

Well, here we are.

Iranian officials said they were working to assess the scale of the damage to its facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan from the strikes that hit early Sunday local time. In a news conference on Sunday morning, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, said that the initial battle damage assessment indicated that all three sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction” and that a final assessment would take time. A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the attack on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility, but severely damaged it.

Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran was likely to dim hopes for a negotiated solution to end the fighting, just days after the president had indicated he would wait for as long as two weeks to give diplomacy a chance. After the U.S. strikes, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi lashed out at the United States for undercutting recent diplomatic efforts — and rejected calls by European leaders to return to the negotiating table.

• An assessment of the three sites the US struck.
• The international and domestic legal arguments we’re likely to see from Trump. Key graf:

Of course, just because the executive branch makes this argument doesn’t mean it’s correct. Legal scholars (including the author) have spilled gallons of ink explaining why reading such extraordinarily broad implied authority to use military force from the president’s constitutionally assigned role as “Commander in Chief” is hard to square with a text that expressly gives Congress, not the president, the authority to “Declare War[,]” among other issues. But for at least the past half century, federal courts have resisted weighing in on war powers issues and have instead used flexible justiciability and jurisdictional doctrines to avoid reaching the merits. This leaves the executive branch’s legal views—and those of the current president, who is the ultimate decider in the event of disagreement with or among federal agencies—in place as the ones that will inform any U.S. military operation.

• The international situation remains extremely fluid, as we have no idea what got destroyed or how the Iranians will react.
• Overview from War Zone.
• Iran seems disinterested in diplomacy.

That’s all I’ve got right now. The things we don’t know:

• How much damage the strikes inflicted
• How Iran will respond
• How stable the Iranian governments grip on power will remain
• How rapidly MAGA will contort its way into compliance

On this last…