“The operation itself seems to be really impressive,” Michael says on today’s edition of The Editors, when asked by Rich for his thoughts on the precision attack on Iran’s nuclear sites ordered by President Trump and carried out by the American military over the weekend.

“It seems that our airmen were under no danger at all. That they had complete run of the skies, that they were refueled well in air and were able to circle back and fly all the way back to the United States. . . . The sheer impressiveness of American air power is an awesome thing to behold.” Michael remains cautious, however, saying we don’t know “how far back we’ve set Iran’s nuclear program. And so that’s why I think it’s hard to judge the ultimate success of this yet.”

Noah is a bit more optimistic: “It’s not like you can just reassemble a fission device. It takes a lot of technical know-how. A lot of those people are dead. It takes facilities that are specialized. A lot of them have been hit.”

He reminds listeners though, “Iran will want to save face. Iran will want to strike back, and it will probably do so. It might be calibrated. There was a face-saving element to ‘Martyr Soleimani,’ the mission that Iran launched in retaliation for the Soleimani strike.

“Iran will make some violent gestures, but it’s our interpretation of them that matters more, at least insofar if they don’t kill anybody, and that could have its own logic to it.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.