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Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Part 2: What’s left of Iran’s nuclear program? - with Lahav Harkov and David Albright
00:26:40
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- [00:00]
Lahav Harkov
Foreign.
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David Albright
You are listening to an art media.
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Lahav Harkov
Podcast all these years, right? I think the Iranians felt like, oh, America is never going to let Israel come and attack our nuclear sites, no matter how much Israel threatens, they don't have the bombs. And it showed not only is it possible that Israel will do it anyway, but then the US Also joined in. And so it raises that threat level to Iran, raises their concern of, oh, maybe we shouldn't even build a nuclear program if they're going to bomb it.
- [00:44]
Dan Senor
Welcome to part two of this conversation. In part one, we gave a tutorial on the science and the history of Iran's nuclear program until June 13th. Now we're going to talk about what remains of it after the Israeli and US Attacks. And for that, we are joined once again by Lahav Harkov of the Jewish Insider. And David Albright is still with us, as he was in part one of this conversation. Lahav, welcome back to the podcast.
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Lahav Harkov
Thanks for having me back.
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Dan Senor
So, Lahav, the early part of this week was one of the wildest news days in terms of conflicting reports on the damage inflicted on the Fordo facility. The report reports were so contradictory that the only conclusion one could reach was that no one can be trusted or very few people and experts can be trusted. I have my own views on the quality of the reporting, the CNN report, but we can leave that for another point in the conversation. You investigated this matter quite thoroughly. So first of all, what do you think explains these contradictions? Explain what we heard from the CNN report and then what we heard from the US And Israel in response to that report. Why don't you start with explaining that, describing that, and then we can get into what you make of the contradictions.
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Lahav Harkov
So the CNN report and then a bunch of other places seem to have been leaked. The same report is based on a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency. What they don't really mention in the CNN report, at least they didn't when it first came out, is that it was a report written, that it was low confidence, they had some intelligence, but they are not very certain about the conclusions they drew from that intelligence. And it was very preliminary, right? It came out like a day or a day and a half after the bombing of Fordeaux, which is, as we said, the nuclear facility that's under a mountain. And it basically said that based on satellite photos, they think that there wasn't extensive damage and that it only rolled the program back about three months. Now, President Trump kept saying it's obliterated, it's Obliterated. It's obliterated. And then soon Netanyahu sort of chimed in. Trump said it's fake news. The New York Times and CNN are fake news. And Netanyahu chimed in just by saying, you know, that we have removed the nuclear threat to Israel. He, he didn't, first of all, he didn't call anyone fake news. Not that he hesitates to do that sometimes anyway. But he, and he sort of didn't. He didn't say it was obliterated. But, you know, the, when you say you've removed the certainly means very extensive damage. I felt like, you know, there's this sort of situation where nobody believes anyone, right? Where I think it's very easy to poke holes in that initial DIA report. I think it's, it, you know, it wears its weaknesses openly by saying it's a low confidence report. But on the other hand, people don't necessarily trust Trump or Netanyahu in the sense that people don't trust politicians ever. Right. They have a political interest in saying that the strike was a success. So I, first of all, I saw a report and comments by David Albright, who also said that he thought that the, I believe the word was curious. He thought the DIA report was curious. And I started to talk to some experts here in Israel as well, and in the States in general. The conclusion from the six different people I spoke to was that it's clear that the damage was more extensive than what the DIA report makes it seem to me. It seems that the damage was quite extensive, but you can't really conclusively know how far it was rolled back or exactly what was destroyed at this point.
- [04:31]
Dan Senor
And even if we could land, say, 1,000 CIA operatives on top of Fordo's bomb site, how would they actually figure out what lies behind 100ft of rock and rubble? Not to mention the time constraints of getting it done within like 72 hours, which is what is implied in the DIA report, that they were able to figure this out so quickly. But even if they could just get a bunch of people on the ground, what would they actually be looking for?
- [04:54]
Lahav Harkov
I guess how many centrifuges are still around, which it seems to me that the centrifuges are the thing that people think are really almost definitely destroyed because they're so delicate, and then how much enriched uranium there is, which David could say better than I could, what that would look like. Presumably, if you have an agent on the ground, they have a better idea. But, you know, there were all these, like, reports or thoughts that maybe Iran had taken a bunch of trucks and moved the rich uranium out of these facilities. But there doesn't seem to be strong evidence of that. And I know the Israeli intelligence assessment is that no significant amount of the uranium was moved away, in which case it means that it's likely that some of it was destroyed because, you know, you were throwing these very, very heavy bombs. It was like 150 tons of explosives into the air shaft into this mountain. Doesn't seem like a lot would survive that. But again, we're not on the ground.
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Dan Senor
David, you're going to jump in.
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David Albright
It's not clear to me they can get in there that the tunnel entrances are blocked. Israel bombed one of the tunnel entrances right above the entrance, above ground. And so it's not clear the even the Iranians can get into the site. And so it's going to be very difficult to figure out exactly how much is destroyed. But according to what Hecseth described, along with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the strike exploited vulnerabilities in the design. And we'd been able to identify one of the ventilation shafts, and we could geolocate the three holes to overlay exactly with one of the main ventilation shaft. And you're really, you're just going down through air. Probably the bunker busters widened it some, but maybe not. So there saw this discussion that you had to get through, you know, 250ft of rock just turned out not to be true at all. And so it was fairly clear that one should have a pretty good expectation that the place was really destroyed, whether we can get information about its exact status or not.
- [06:55]
Lahav Harkov
I was going to say, you know, there's all this confusion about what's left of the nuclear site. There was also a bit of a back and forth about whether Israel actually has agents on the ground or not, because President Trump said it. Then later in the day, the IDF Chief of staff, Iel Zamir, said that there were commandos on the ground, but didn't say he was saying it in relation to the ballistic missile threat and not the nuclear threat. And then this morning, the IDF clarified that commandos were in another country and not in Iran at all. So either Trump gave away a secret or Trump fudged what happened a little bit.
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Dan Senor
David, for argument's sake, let's assume that the bunker busting bombs did not penetrate the actual spaces where the instruments and the centrifuges were or are. Let's just assume they didn't penetrate. What would be the nature of the damage? We can imagine these 12 bombs inflicted just on this machinery. If they didn't totally penetrate, I think.
- [07:46]
David Albright
If it hit the bottom, then they're essentially all destroyed because it's confined space where the shock wave is going to pressure spike is going to bounce all over, go back and forth. And if it doesn't get it the first time, it'll get it the second and all happen within, you know, fractions of a second or a few seconds. But if it detonated 100ft above the chamber and they're coming down ventilation shafts which tend to be at the end of a corridor, it's anyone's guess. I mean it could be enough, quite a bit of damage can happen. But if it's somehow captured by the rock, a lot of the force would be dissipated. So it's hard to know.
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Dan Senor
You wrote David a couple days ago on X that and I quote here, Iran has likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges in the tons and Fordeaux, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Close quote. What did you mean by that and how do you arrive at such a precise figure?
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David Albright
To me, 20,000 isn't a precise figure, but the way comes from is fordow has about 2,700 and that estimate assumes that those are not going to be operational. And one of the things, and I should mention if, if the detonation even above the chamber is going to knock out the electricity for sure. And so I think it's established as a baseline that the plant is inoperative. But if they got through and destroyed him, then there's 2700 centrifuges there. There's also the Natanz enrichment plant which has about 15,000 centrifuges in one of its major halls and none in the other. And that place was hit by earth penetrators of Israel and then one of these mops, maybe even two. And so that would have caused immense destruction. When we first saw the satellite imagery of Natanz, you could see that the pilot plant, which held about 700 centrifuges, was completely destroyed. And the electrical supply, both the original, the main one and the backups were destroyed. And that would cause the centrifuges slow down and in that many will break. And so the assessment initially was many broke. But then I noticed a couple days later in our own work because we were looking at satellite imagery extensively all through this 12 day period and that there was a small crater. Our satellite imagery analyst identified two more. And so it, and these were earth penetrators of Israel. Then The US Came through with one or two of its own. So I think it's huge destruction. And so the estimate of is an upper bound, but it's the kind of expectation that one would expect from the attacks that have taken place now. Natanz is much easier to get to. There's many entrances. It's only 25ft underground. If you have respiratory equipment and protective suits, you can go in there and take a look. And I would imagine that the Iranians have done that. And it was part of the reason that the Iranian officials have started to talk about extensive damage to their nuclear program.
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Dan Senor
And Lahav, you're talking to a lot of Israeli experts and intelligence officials who are now thinking about Iran's capacity to rebuild, both in terms of the infrastructure and in terms of the expertise, the knowledge that one needs, the sort of intellectual capital or intellectual property necessary to restart the program. So how are those officials and experts you're talking to thinking about what Iran would have to do now to have the capacity to rebuild?
- [11:11]
Lahav Harkov
So far, the assessment in Israel is pretty optimistic. Netanyahu and chief of staff, but also people behind the scenes are talking about, you know, the plan being rolled back by years. What exactly years means, you know, is it two years or 10 years? That we don't know. But it's certainly enough time to try to take action in different ways, whether diplomatically, secretly, militarily, to stop it, as opposed to, say, the six months that the CNN report was predicting. They've also, you know, the operation. Israel killed 14 nuclear scientists. And so definitely the knowledge that is needed to rebuild is lacking. Maybe it's not gone entirely. Maybe there are some other people left who have some of the knowledge, but it would be difficult.
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Dan Senor
Do we have any idea how many there were actually, like, out of 14? Out of what? I hear this number 14 all the time. Do we know?
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David Albright
Yeah, it's a couple hundred. And they were targeting the intellectual leadership or the leadership itself, so. But it's hard to figure out. I mean, the Ahmad plan had the personnel roles, and they. They are in the archive. This nuclear archive was about 300.
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Dan Senor
And that was a nuclear archive that Israel managed to get in 2018.
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David Albright
That's right, yeah. And also, before we move on, there's another part of this destruction that's very important is the Isfahan facility. And there it was. Uranium conversion facility. The facility that makes the uranium hexafluoride was bombed by the United States. And it's a pretty large facility. If you don't have uranium hexafluoride you can't run centrifuges. And so you may have, they have a certain supply of it and they have the 60%, but essentially their centrifuge program is dead in the water. There was quite a bit of targeting of a centrifuge production infrastructure. So besides that plant, the Israelis hit three centrifuge manufacturing sites that had been declared under the old nuclear deal. And the IAEA had pretty good confidence that those were the main ones. And so there you have Iran being unable to make centrifuges. And so you've actually created a situation where it's going to take them several years to rebuild these kind of facilities. And uranium conversion facility was probably a decade long project because they have to not only build it, but they also have to acquire the equipment that goes in it and some of it has to be imported. And so that creates further delays and opportunities to slow them down.
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Lahav Harkov
My understanding for some of the experts I spoke to is that the Isfahan, the conversion facility was mostly built by China and that Iranian scientists don't have the know how to build that facility themselves. And they sort of raise questions as so whether China would sell it to Iran. Again, not that we should trust China so much, but because the IAEA said that Iran is violating the npt, China might be a lot more hesitant to help them with a nuclear program than they were before.
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Dan Senor
Got it.
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David Albright
And also at Isfahan, the uranium, this enriched uranium metal conversion facility was bombed by Israel. It's one of the first things taken out. And they're also traditionally most of the 60% and 20% would be stored at Isfahan. And the inspectors used to report exactly how much was at Isfahan versus how much was at Fordow. And so Israel targeted the building that was known to store this at Isfahan. But that's where people think that Iran may have moved it, they may have moved it into a mountain complex that's associated with Isfahan that was built around 2004, 2005. And that tunnel complex was not destroyed, but the tunnel entrances were sealed. And, and so some of this. Let's say you believe Fordow isn't fully destroyed. Well, it's been made inoperative is kind of the term of art. And Israel's even said that if, if they move to reopen Fordow, in case they think they can operate it, they will close the tunnels again. I think either way, the, the end point is that their centrifuge program is finished and then we can discuss how long it would take to rebuild it. But I Think you are talking years and, and maybe they'll run into problems where they, they can't build that part at all. So I think it was a very successful operation and I think like the.
- [15:26]
Lahav Harkov
Success of the operation, like of course, to some extent it's judged by how much of the nuclear program was destroyed. But I think that any significant level of destruction, any rolling it back for years, no matter the exact number of years, is successful because they were weeks away from breakout and they were working on, starting to work on weaponization. So no matter what, that's a significant rollback of the threat to Israel. And I also think that there's like a broader success here in the sense that has shifted the mindset the way that the region is looking at this conflict to say that actually, yes, the Israel, you know, all these years, right. I think the Iranians felt like, oh, America is never going to let Israel come and attack our nuclear sites. No matter how much Israel threatens, they don't have bombs. And it showed, not only is it possible that Israel will do it anyway, but then the US also joined in. And so it raises the threat level to Iran, raises their concern of oh, maybe we shouldn't even build a nuclear program if they're going to bomb it.
- [16:28]
Dan Senor
An Iranian official said that extensive damage was inflicted. So the Iranian official is implicitly contradicting the CNN report from the leak from the dia. Couldn't one argue that it's in Iran's interest for that perception to be there that the US and Israel were successful if they want to take the pressure off Iran to let the world and the IAEA and all the interested parties think the Iranian nuclear program is done, or at least done for a while. So Iran will be left alone.
- [16:56]
David Albright
Yeah, and actually it's very dangerous to take that position because I would characterize what's left as remnants, but they're very dangerous remnants. 60% enriched uranium, stocks of sizes we don't know. But all you need to make one quantity of weapon grade uranium sufficient for a bomb is 40 kg of 60%. And so one tenth of the stockpile is enough to make enough weapon grade uranium for a bomb. Israel was very successful at eroding Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. And the killing of these scientists is public evidence of that. But they also were attacking the group itself that, that has the nuclear Weaponization program in it has an acronym of spnd. And they went after the headquarters, they went after their facilities, the, the labs, the headquarters of the subdivisions. We tracked two of those and, and we assume that more were hit, that we just don't know where they are. So I think it. But nonetheless, if you leave Iran with 60% enriched uranium, some 20%, maybe some 5%, and you leave them with a couple thousand centrifuges, at some point they can put all that together and make the weapon grade uranium for a bomb. And so I think it's incumbent on President Trump to make a deal where it does end enrichment and the stocks are removed from Iran. And I would add that it's not enough to have the IA inspected. I mean, I think we'd be reassured if the IAEA inspected it. But what if they say we have 300kg, the rest is in the rubble at Fordow, you go look for it. And yet it's not in the rubble for now, it's hidden away. So I think the effort should be to remove it and then to have a more intrusive inspection regime that gets at this question of could it be in Fordow? And maybe if you have an international effort with the United States behind it, you can go back into Fordow. And so I think you need a deal that creates an intrusive system of inspection that can answer these questions and has the resources to do it, but not to walk away.
- [18:57]
Dan Senor
On that note, Lav, I'm just riffing here off the top of my head, but if I recall correctly these dates, the world learned about the Natanz facility in 2002. And then it was like, oops, yes, we have a nuclear program, effectively Ron was saying, but it's for civilian purposes. And then they secretly, without anyone noticing. It wasn't until 2008 that we learned about Fordeau. Then another six plus years goes by, Iran says, oh, Natanz, don't worry, it's just a program for civilian capability. And then all along secretly building Fordeau. Then the world learns about Fordot in 2008 and we're like, wow, how did we miss this for the last six years? And fast forward to the archive that David, you mentioned earlier that Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, has managed to extract something like 100,000 documents or something. And that was in 2018 that we all started to learn about the extent and the depth of the program. And I just wonder, is there some facility in another place? If you think from 2002 to 2008, Israel didn't know about Fordo 2008 to 2018, they didn't know a lot of information that they only learned 10 years later. Is anybody concerned that in five or 10 years there's some other facility that's not Isfahan, not Natanz, not Fordow, that nobody knows about. And we're going to be totally freaked out that we in Israel, the US And Israel went to these great lengths. And then, you know, right beneath our noses was some facility that no one in Israel or the US or the IAEA was aware of.
- [20:24]
Lahav Harkov
So, first of all, we know that they were trying to build more facilities. One of them is called Pickaxe Mountain. That name sticks to my head because it's kind of strange. But I think, and I hope, But I also, from what I'm getting from the people who I spoke to, is that Israel is not, like, resting on its laurels now. It's not like we destroyed the nuclear plan, and so the job is over. I mean, you know, there was all this talk Israelis were very into regime change in Iran in the last couple weeks. Right. So that didn't happen. And. But Israelis know that it's the same regime that talks about the destruction of Israel all the time. And so it's not that the threat is sort of fully eliminated. Netanyahu said the threat is eliminated. Right. But it's not. There's still very negative potential. And Israel has excellent intelligence in Iran, sort of on all levels. And we saw that in this operation, and really precise targets that they were able to hit. Certain, at least to some extent, they're keeping an eye on all of those things and they're still remaining vigilant. So ultimately, the answer to your question is yes. I mean, I think Israel will continue to be concerned about Iran for the foreseeable future unless the Iranian people take back their country. And even then. And you never know how things will end up.
- [21:40]
David Albright
Yeah. And from an inspector technical point of view, you have to worry about it. And we know from the IAEA reporting that there's equipment that was in shipping containers, that it was nuclear weapons related at the Turkish Abad site and was hauled away. And the IEA has been asking, where is it? Can we see it? And Iran says, no, it's not clear at all. Israel knows where all that is. And so I think we do need an inspection regime that can get to this and in the shorter term, because you do have to worry in the longer term that there will be another president. And that president may have a very different view on attacking Iranian facilities, albeit they may be related to nuclear weapons. And so I think Trump has an opportunity to really do something profound to create a system of no enrichment in Iran and then to dismantle the remnants and Ensure that there aren't these secret sites. And so if he doesn't do it, then I'm afraid we're going to be revisiting this problem. Probably shorter. In a shorter time frame than is needed for Iran to rebuild the centrifuge production infrastructure.
- [22:47]
Dan Senor
Okay, so in wrapping up here, I just. We started this conversation by imagining the progress bar. I know, David, I maybe tried to oversimplify it. You insisted on two progress bars instead of one, but we started trying to imagine the progress bar.
- [23:00]
David Albright
Sorry, I'm a scientist.
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Dan Senor
Yeah, I get it. I appreciate it, trust me. And I'm a podcast host, so we're trying to meet somewhere in the middle. But we started with the progress bar and where Ron was at, call it two weeks ago. If that progress bar was not measuring a 1 to 100% scale, but the 40 years. Let's look at it as a timeline perspective.
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Lahav Harkov
Right.
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Dan Senor
For 40 years, Iran has spent on this program. In terms of years, what is the range of years this attack set Iran back to? Can you think about it that way?
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David Albright
I think several years, but it depends. You have to say, what are you measuring? If you want to, just say they get 2000 centrifuges operating, they enrich the 60%, they then cobble together, you know, a nuclear weaponization effort. You're talking about a year, maybe. It doesn't mean that a year from now because they're really struggling and are on their back heels, and a year.
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Dan Senor
From when they decide to really turn it back on.
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David Albright
Yeah, right. But it's this remnant that you have to fear, and you have to fear the rebuilding, too. But even in a sense, short term, we really do have to deal with this remnant. And there's other ways than what I'm proposing, but.
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Dan Senor
And when you say the remnant again, remind us what you mean by the remnant.
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David Albright
The. Any 60%, 20%, 5% enriched uranium and then centrifuges that were built but not put into Ford Hour Natallets. And it really. It's not so much finding that secret, secret centrifuge. Like we know there's a third one. Actually, it was declared to the iaea, so the IA knows exactly where it is. Director General Grossi just said it's near. It's at Isfahan. We don't know what that means. HOV mentioned Pickaxe Mountain. That's another place. But they could build a centrifuge plant in a warehouse building in Tehran. And so you really need some way to bolster what Mossad does and what military intelligence does to get more boots on the ground in a sense to get rid of this dangerous, this remnant that's in Iran. I think the negotiations next week should be front and center, not just it shouldn't be another rendition of we've destroyed it all and we don't need a deal.
- [25:04]
Dan Senor
What do you mean by we don't need a deal?
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David Albright
Trump said that, that we may not need a deal?
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Lahav Harkov
Yeah, Trump said it was obliterated. So, like, what's the point is more or less what he said.
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David Albright
Right, Right.
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Dan Senor
What's the point of negotiation? Okay. David Lahav, thank you for doing this. This was, we tackled a lot of complex stuff here, so I think I certainly learned a ton. I hope our listeners did, too. And I look forward to having you both back on because this issue is going to be with us one way or the other for the foreseeable future.
- [25:33]
David Albright
Okay, well, thank you.
- [25:35]
Lahav Harkov
Thank you.
- [25:45]
Dan Senor
That's our show for today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who might appreciate it. Time and again, we found that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the call Me Back community. So thank you. And to offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates or explore past episodes, please Visit our website, ark media.org that's arkmedia.org where you can deepen your understanding of the topics we cover. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar, Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Mariangelis Burgos. Our director of operations is Maya Rakoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.