How Iran retaliates after the U.S. strikes on its nuclear program – National
Iran has spent decades building multi-layered military capabilities both at home and across the region, at least in part aimed at preventing the U.S. from attacking it. By launching the Israeli war, the United States may have cancelled the last principle of keeping it.
This could mean launching an attack on U.S. troops in the Middle East, trying to close a key bottleneck in global oil supply, or developing nuclear weapons using the remaining nuclear weapons of Iran’s controversial plan after the U.S. strikes at three key locations.
The decision to retaliate against the United States and its regional allies will bring Iran's larger target banks and closer to Israel, making it possible to use its missiles and drones larger. The United States and Israel have superior capabilities, but these capabilities have not always proven to be decisive in the recent history of U.S. military interventions in the region.
Since the start of war by Israel's astonishing bombing of Iran's military and nuclear sites on June 13, Iranian officials from Iran's supreme leader warned the United States to stay outside, saying it would have dire consequences for the entire region.
It should be clear soon whether these are empty threats or severe predictions.
Protesters’ slogans are on Sunday, June 22, 2025, posters protested against Iran’s supreme leader Aitola Ali Khamenei after the U.S. attacked Iran’s nuclear site.
Vahid Salemi / Associated Press
This is Iran's next move.
Targeting the Hormuz Strait
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, about 20% of global oil trades through, and is only 33 kilometers wide in its narrowest location. Any interference there could soar around the world and hit American wallets.
Iran has a fast-attack ship and thousands of naval mines that could have made the strait impassable for at least some time. It can also launch missiles from the long Persian Gulf shore as its ally, the Houthi rebels of Yemen did in the Red Sea.
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The U.S. Fifth Fleet stationed in nearby Bahrain has long promised to maintain freedom of navigation in the straits and will respond with a far superior force. But even a relatively short firefight could paralyze transport traffic and harsh investors, causing oil prices to soar and create international ceasefire pressure.
Attack our bases and allies in the area
With thousands of troops stationed in the region, including permanent bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the Arab Gulf of Mexico countries happen to be from Iran's Persian Gulf – closer than Israel.
These bases have the same complex defensive and defensive agencies as Israel, but will be much less warning time before it will be before the wave of missiles or armed drone swarms. Even hundreds of kilometers of Israel cannot stop all incoming fires.
Iran also has the option to attack critical oil and gas facilities in those countries, with the goal of making us more expensive to participate in the war. In 2019, a drone attack was carried out on two major oil sites in Saudi Arabia, claimed by Houthis but was widely blamed on Iran – briefly cutting the kingdom's oil production in half.
Israeli soldiers inspected the location of a direct missile strike launched from Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, June 22, 2025.
Bernat Armangue / Associated Press
Activate regional allies
Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance – a network of radical groups throughout the Middle East, is the shadow of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 before the war, an attack on Israel in the Gaza Strip – but it still has some powerful features.
Israel’s 20-month war in Gaza severely undermined Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Israel Maul suffered Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing most of the leadership in much of southern Lebanon and creating much of the limitations.
But Iran can still call on Houthis to threaten war in the United States and resume attacks in the Red Sea in Iraq's Allied militia. Both have drone and missile capabilities that allow them to target the United States and its allies.
Iran could also seek to respond with further radical attacks, as it was widely accused in the 1990s of attacking a Jewish community centre in Argentina, which was blamed on Tehran and Hezbollah.
Sprint towards nuclear weapons
It could be days or weeks, or the full impact of the United States on Iranian nuclear sites.
But experts have long warned that even a joint strike between the United States and Israel would only delay Iran's ability to develop weapons rather than eliminate them. That's because Iran disperses its plans across the country to multiple locations, including hardened underground facilities.
Iran may work to repair or rebuild its nuclear program, while Israeli and U.S. fighter jets are centered around overhead. But it could still decide to end its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency completely and abandon the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Non-Proliferation.
North Korea announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003 and tested nuclear weapons three years later, but it was free to develop its plans without punishing air strikes.
Iran insists that its plan is peaceful, although it is the only technology that makes uranium rich as high as 60%, away from 90% of weapon-level levels, shorter technology. Since 2003, U.S. intelligence agencies and IAEA have assessed that Iran has never had an organized military nuclear program.
Israel is widely regarded as the only nuclear-weapon country in the Middle East, but does not recognize possession of such a weapon.
& Copy 2025 Canadian Press
