Trump’s enchantments powerless to dispel threat of Iran’s nuclear program

(Originally published June 30 in “What in the World“) Iran will never stop making more enriched uranium.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir-Saeid Iravani, said Sunday that Tehran’s efforts to produce enriched uranium were for strictly peaceful purposes and would never stop. “There is no [sic] any threat,” Iravani said. There is still no word, however, on whether Iran still has the 408kg of enriched uranium it had before the June 21 U.S. airstrike on its nuclear sites, or whether that uranium lies buried beneath the resulting rubble.

U.S. intelligence has reportedly intercepted communications between senior Iran officials saying the damage was not as bad as they had feared. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the assessment. “The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense,” she said.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of Trump’s assertion that “There are thousands of tons of rock in that room right now… They [sic] whole place was just destroyed.”

Either way, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, now says Iran would likely be able to resume making enriched uranium in just months. Grossi’s updated appraisal corroborated an initial assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency that the strike set back the Iranian nuclear program by only a few months. That conclusion has since been echoed by European intelligence agencies.

So pack up the turkey sandwiches and warm up the B-2s, boys. Israeli forces may soon return to Iranian skies, too. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said last Thursday Israel aims to prevent Tehran from pursuing not only its nuclear ambitions, but rebuilding its air power or long-range missiles.