Middle East
Israeli security forces and first responders gathering in front of a building damaged by an Iranian strike in Tel Aviv on June 22, 2025. Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Sustained regional peace is unlikely following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a former American diplomat said Sunday, warning the escalation is more likely to deepen instability than lead to a lasting peace across the Middle East.
“The likelihood that this is going to turn into a broad, positive, and sustainable peace movement among all the countries in the region is really unlikely,” Joanne Held Cummings, a former US diplomat and foreign affairs and Middle East analyst, told Rudaw.
US President Donald Trump early Sunday announced that the US had carried out strikes targeting Iran’s three primary nuclear sites - Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. He later told Fox News that six “bunker-buster” bombs were used against the Fordow plant, which houses Iran’s most advanced centrifuges, while the other two sites were hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from submarines.
World leaders and governments on Sunday reacted to the strikes, with some condemning the move and others calling for de-escalation.
The strikes came after Trump said Thursday that he would decide within two weeks whether the US would get involved in the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz, following an Iranian attack on a hospital in Tel Aviv, said Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot be allowed to “continue to exist.”
Cummings said, “Iran can keep going far longer than, I think, people are assuming. Even if there were to be an attack on significant political and religious figures, the idea that Iran falls is, I think, not a valid one,” adding that “Iran does have a fairly active domestic economy.”
Despite sweeping international sanctions, Iran’s economy has so far avoided collapse through what the government calls a “resistance economy.” This strategy relies on boosting domestic production, reducing imports, and expanding trade with partners like China to bypass Western financial restrictions. While the public bears the brunt of high inflation and economic hardship, the government sustains critical sectors by promoting self-sufficiency and turning to informal networks.
“Saying you must declare that you have been defeated is likely to generate the exact opposite [effect],” Cummings said, adding that this could be “a rhetorical device calling on Iran to surrender and then using the fact that they refuse as a justification to take further action.”
Israel on June 13 launched strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, killing several senior military commanders and prompting retaliatory attacks from Tehran. The conflict has now entered its second week. The escalation has also halted indirect nuclear negotiations between Tehran and Washington.
World leaders have called for a return to diplomacy.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that the United States and Israel “decided to blow up” diplomacy when they struck Iran’s nuclear sites. On Friday, he had said that Tehran is ready to resume nuclear negotiations once the fighting with Israel ends.
Iran on Sunday launched attacks on multiple sites in Israel, including Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. Israel’s national emergency service, Magen David Adom, reported nearly dozens injured in the strikes.
Nalin Hassan contributed to this article.
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