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US Politics

US Politics

This essay is part two of a two-part series on the rise and fall of liberal internationalism

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On 13 June , Israel began to hit Iran ’s nuclear infrastructure and scientists, military leadership, government buildings, and military assets with relentless waves of airstrikes.

On 21 June , US President Donald Trump announced that American warplanes had struck Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz , and Isfahan .

A fragile ceasefire was announced, which is still holding at the time of writing.

Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators struck.

Israel will maintain that it had no choice but to execute a preemptive defensive strike on Iran ’s nuclear program.

But its unilateral decision to launch those strikes have done little to strengthen the idea of a rules-based liberal international order.