Heavy names contradict Trump about Iran bombs
While Donald Trump increasingly stubbornly insists that his bombings have completely destroyed Iran's ability to build nuclear weapons, more and more voices are being heard that claim the opposite.
The latest heavy name is the head of the UN Atomic Energy Agency, who assesses that Iran's ability to enrich uranium has been delayed by at most a few months.
There is probably no outsider who has better insight into Iran's nuclear energy program than Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA. He and his team of experts have been on site inspecting Iran's facilities for many years and have been in contact with the country's leading nuclear energy experts.
In an interview with the American television-company CBS, Grossi says that the damage to the facilities is extensive but not total.
- If the Iranians want to, they can start enriching uranium again within a few months, says Grossi.
He emphasizes that it is also a matter of Iran still having the knowledge of how to enrich uranium. All they need is to get some of the thousands of centrifuges they previously had up and running.
Grossi also points out that it is currently impossible to know whether Iran has had time to move any of the 400 kilograms of uranium that it has already enriched to places where the US and Israel have not bombed.
The question is quite crucial for making an assessment of how soon Iran will be able to build nuclear weapons.
The truth at the moment is that no one knows, except for a small circle of Iranian leaders who are unlikely to be particularly interested in telling us what really happened.
Grossi points out that even though the IAEA was able to inspect the Iranian facilities up until just a few days before they were bombed, there are uncertainties about whether Iran has revealed everything and what its real intentions are.
IAEA inspectors have found traces of uranium in places where Iran has not declared that any enrichment is taking place and, according to Grossi, have not been able to give any credible answers as to why.
In other words, there seem to be things that Iran has hidden even from IAEA inspectors, who have had fewer opportunities for inspections after Trump in 2018 terminated the nuclear energy agreement that Iran entered into during the time of Barack Obama.
Iran's foreign minister has once again made it clear that the country does not accept the US demand to stop enriching uranium. This goes directly against Trump's claims that Iran has given up on its attempts to acquire nuclear weapons after the bombs.
Another indication that the damage is not quite as extensive as Trump claims is an intercepted conversation between mellan Iranian government officials revealed by the Washington Post, in which the officials speculate about why the damage is not as extensive as expected.
This may not mean much in itself, but in the larger puzzle that is being put together, it is another indication that President Trump has overestimated the effects of the American bunker-busting bombs that were dropped on the facilities in Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow.
The Trump administration has so far been unable to present any evidence of the extent to which the Iranian facilities have been destroyed. When it presented the results to the Senate last week, it referred to a simulation of the bombs' effects that the intelligence community had done. But nothing that proved what the actual damage looked like.
Which in itself is not so strange since these cannot be assessed without an on-site inspection. No outsiders have so far been able to visit the bombed facilities. Not even the IAEA.
But instead of saying it as it is; that it is not yet possible to know exactly how big the damage is, Trump maintains what he said minutes after the bombings took place. Namely, that the facilities are completely destroyed and that Iran's nuclear weapons program is buried for a long time to come.
Trump may be right, but it could just as well be what Grossi says. That Iran may soon resume uranium enrichment and that it may even have hidden some of what it already had.
But instead of acknowledging the uncertainty, Trump is hitting back forcefully at those who try to question the effects of the American bombings in the slightest.
Trump is threatening to sue CNN, the New York Times and other mediais outlets that have tried to give a more nuanced picture of the bombings.
Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, has said that those who have leaked information that contradicts Trump should be tried for high treason.
Trump himself says that he wants to force journalists to reveal their sources.
A truly astonishing attack on free media and their sources.
While Trump has seemed relatively uninterested in negotiating a new nuclear energy agreement with Iran after the bombs (the facilities are destroyed anyway, according to him), the head of the IAEA believes that it must be done in order to create security around Iran's possible nuclear weapons ambitions.
Iran's parliament has decided to throw out IAEA inspectors and suspend cooperation, but Grossi believes that this is mostly a political gesture. Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (of nuclear weapons) and has therefore committed to letting in inspectors.
The sooner that can happen, the sooner the world will have clarity on the effects of the bombings. After that, we will be free from Trump's unjustified overconfidence and the world will no longer have to guess where Iran stands on future nuclear weapons.
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