Iran’s nuclear programme: It’s back to diplomacy

Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran…
Let’s Take A Stand
Bomb Iran
Our Country’s Got A Feelin’
Really Hit The Ceilin’ Bomb Iran…
Tell The Ayatollah “Gonna Put You In A Box!”
Bomb Iran Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran…
Let’s Nuke ‘Em Woo…

America’s brazen and abhorrent display of superior military power against nations it can bomb at will is back to haunt 45 years after the insane, repugnant and malevolent song was released by the American country pop and rock ‘n’ roll group Vince Vance & the Valiants in 1980.

The most popular parody of the song Barbara Ann, by the American doo-wop vocal group The Regents in 1961, was released after the November 1979 Iran hostage crisis, threatening to nuke Iran.

Unsurprisingly, the song was a rage.

The American insanity didn’t stop there.

In 2007, then-Arizona senator John McCain, vying to be the Republican presidential nominee, burst into an idiotic impromptu performance of Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran when asked about Iran during a campaign rally in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. To cover up the childish spectacle and the embarrassment that followed, he termed it a joke.

After decades, America’s manic obsession with bombing Iran finally came true as another maverick and reckless person, dangerously the most powerful man in the world, ordered Operation Midnight Hammer.

On June 22, seven B-2 Spirit bombers dropped 12 GBU-57A/B bunker buster bombs, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOPs), on Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant and another 2 on the Natanz Enrichment Complex. Meanwhile, the USS Georgia submarine launched 30 BGM-109 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre.

Donald Trump, in his usual braggadocio, claimed that the strikes were “a spectacular military success” that “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme.

And the same vile song was back. Three days after the bombing, Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account featuring several B-2s dropping bombs as the song played in the background.

However, it’s evident that neither the Iranian nuclear programme has been “obliterated” nor the Islamic nation intends to stop enriching uranium despite the damage to its three nuclear plants.

Trump’s latest admission that Iran has not agreed to IAEA inspections and wants to continue enrichment proves that the US bombing had the opposite effect.

There, why did Trump bomb Iran in the first place?

Iran N-programme without IAEA monitoring

Iran was cooperating with the IAEA—though not fully—per the NPT, before Israel’s June 13 attack. However, after the US bombing, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian approved a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA.

On July 4, the last remaining IAEA inspectors left Iran.

Iran alleged that the IAEA provided an excuse to Israel to attack after issuing a report on May 31 that mentioned three locations, Lavisan-Shian, Varamin and Turquzabad, that  “were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s”. Interestingly, several of the findings were related to activities detected decades ago.

Subsequently, on June 12, a day before the Israeli attack, the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution declaring Iran in breach of NPT obligations.

All this while, the IAEA never produced evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb except that it had 408.6 kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium.

In its latest quarterly report, the IAEA had said that Iran has enough material to produce, at least, 10 nukes if it enriches its 60 per cent stockpile to 93 per cent (weapons-grade uranium, or WGU). Iran can produce one nuke in 2.5 days, 5 in 11 days, 9 in 21 days, 11 in 30 days, 15 in 2 months, 19 in 3 months, 21 in 4 months and 22 in 5 months.

The IAEA report was hypothetical.

According to nuclear experts, Iran would take months or a year to build a deliverable nuke as it requires advanced metallurgy, engineering, machining WGU into the core of a nuke, atomic purification, manufacturing and testing the complete warhead rigorously and exploding it underground.

Without IAEA monitoring and inspection, nothing can stop Iran now from enriching uranium to weapons grade or developing a nuclear bomb if it wants to—secretly.

In the IAEA’s absence, the extent of damage caused to the three plants can’t be accurately assessed either.

Moreover, Iran could also quit the NPT. Foreign minister Abbas Araghchi recently said that Iran will “act accordingly with the interest of the country” regarding its NPT membership. If Iran withdraws from the NPT, it will be the most dangerous scenario with no control or oversight of its nuclear programme.

Iran is repairing damaged nuclear plants

Iran has already started repairing the damaged plants and clearing the debris, proving that they were not destroyed.

The Natanz site contained 14,000 underground centrifuges enriching uranium up to 60 per cent. Maxar Technologies satellite imagery shows that one of the two craters formed by the MOPs has been filled and two tents and a truck were present at the impact site.

Besides, several roads above the complex covered with rubble were cleared using heavy machinery.

The Isfahan site has several facilities that converted yellowcake to uranium hexafluoride, produced reactor fuel and made uranium metal for nukes.

Planet Labs satellite imagery shows that the entrance at Isfahan has been cleared.

At the Fordow site, buried 80 metres, 2,200 centrifuges produced uranium enriched up to 60 per cent. Maxar satellite imagery shows rapid repair/reconstruction “at and near the ventilation shafts and holes”.

According to David Albright, founder-president of the Institute for Science and International Security, “The Iranians are actively working at the two MOP impact sites penetrating the ventilation shafts”, including “backfilling the craters as well as conducting engineering damage assessments and likely radiological sampling. The craters above the main shafts remain open”.

In another post, he said, “As of July 1, Iran has sufficiently cleared the surroundings of the eastern tunnel portal to gain vehicle access to the entrance portal although the extent of access inside the tunnel is unclear.”

Missing enriched uranium and further enrichment

The IAEA is clueless about the 60 per cent enriched uranium stockpile.

There are four possibilities regarding the stockpile.

The first possibility is that Iran moved the stockpile before the Israeli and US bombings. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s adviser, Mahdi Mohammadi, had said earlier that the nuclear infrastructure at Fordow was removed in anticipation of the bombings.

Two days after the US bombing, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that Iran had informed the Agency on the day of the Israeli strikes that it would take “special measures” to protect its stockpile and equipment. “They did not get into details … we can imagine that this material [stockpile] is there,” he told the media.

Even a leaked initial battle damage assessment report by the Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated that some of the stockpile was moved out of multiple nuclear sites before the US bombing.

Iran has around 20 nuclear facilities and could have dispersed the stockpile among them or stored it at a single plant.

Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, claimed without providing evidence or intel that Iran didn’t move the stockpile from the plants before the bombing.

To cover up for the failure to trace the stockpile, Republican lawmakers are now saying that the bombing wasn’t intended to target the enriched uranium.

Trump’s friend and a fierce advocate of bombing Iran, senator Lindsey Graham, said, “I don’t know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists. But it wasn’t part of the targets there.”

However, the stockpile is untraceable, and there’s no evidence of damage to all the centrifuges and other equipment at the three facilities.

As Kelsey Davenport, director for non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, rightly said that the stockpile “is a significant part of the proliferation risk, particularly if centrifuges are unaccounted for”.

The second possibility, though remote, is that the stockpile is buried under the rubble. But only Iran can access it as the inspectors are out and cooperation with the IAEA has been suspended.

The third possibility is that the stockpile was stored at such depths at Fordow and Isfahan that the bunker busters couldn’t reach it. Anyway, the GBU-57A/B can penetrate only 61 metres and Fordow is 80-90 metres deep. That’s why 12 MOPs were dropped at Fordow, causing six craters. However, it’s still not clear whether the impact was big enough to have destroyed the underground plant.

Regarding Isfahan, which is deeper than Fordow, Iran hasn’t made its depth public. Therefore, if the stockpile was stored at Isfahan, it is intact since no bunker busters were dropped there.

The fourth possibility, which is the remotest, is that the stockpile was destroyed. In that case, Iran would need to restart enriching uranium at the earliest.

“If there is this will on our part, and the will exists in order to once again make progress in this industry, we will be able to expeditiously repair the damages and make up for the lost time … We have also gone through 12 days of imposed war. Therefore, people will not easily back down from enrichment,” Araghchi told  CBS News  this month.

Araghchi’s deputy, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, echoed his statement. “Our policy has not changed on enrichment. Iran has every right to do enrichment within its territory,” he told  NBC News .

How much time will Iran need to restart enrichment?

Grossi believes that  Iran can restart enrichment   within months. “The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” he told CBS News last month.

Why bomb Iran if objective was unachievable?

Iran’s nuclear programme isn’t “obliterated”.

“One cannot obliterate the technology and science for enrichment through bombings,” Araghchi told CBS.

Grossi also admitted that “it’s not total damage”. He told CBS that Iran has the…industrial and technological capacities.”

Even the Pentagon’s latest assessment, without evidence, says that Iran’s nuclear programme has been  degraded   “probably closer to two years”—notably, not destroyed.

Besides, America’s and Israel’s biggest fear that Iran can manufacture a nuke—despite no evidence—remains.

According to the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Iran can produce a nuke in one to three months if the stockpile is intact and 6-12 months if the stockpile was destroyed or buried.

Trump’s purpose for bombing Iran raises several questions.

First, why was the under-construction centrifuge assembly facility, 150 metres deep under Mt. Kolang Gaz La, south of the Natanz plant, not bombed? The IAEA was supposed to inspect the site on the first day of the Israeli strikes, but it was cancelled.

Second, why were only 12 MOPs dropped on Fordow considering that its depth was more than the reach of the bombs? It was evident that several days of strikes were essential to dismantle the nuclear programme, especially at the three nuclear sites.

Third and most important, why was Isfahan not targeted with the GBU-57A/B when it had the largest stockpile of the 60 per cent enriched uranium? Besides, Grossi identified Isfahan as the location of a “huge” new uranium enrichment facility that Iran announced on June 12.

Therefore, hitting Isfahan’s ground facilities with Tomahawks was useless. According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, Isfahan’s underground site is too deep to be impacted by the MOPs.

Caine’s comments, made during a classified Senate briefing, belied Trump’s claim of the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme as Isfahan’s underground facility is intact.

So, why did Trump bomb Iran’s three facilities when he doubted the effectiveness of the GBU-57A/B and asked his military advisers whether it could destroy Fordow because it wasn’t battle-tested?

Even the Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a part of the Pentagon tasked with countering WMDs that studied Fordow for 15 years—culminating in the production of GBU-57A/B—also doubted the bomb’s effectiveness in destroying the site.

During a defence briefing, DTRA suggested that only softening the ground at Fordow with conventional bombs and then  dropping a tactical nuke  from a B-2 could destroy Fordow.

Yet, Trump went ahead and dropped the MOPs on Fordow and Natanz but not Isfahan.

On the face of it, Trump wanted to coerce Iran to stop enrichment, a sticking point in the five rounds of US-Iran talks from April to May. However, the reverse happened with Iran determined to continue enrichment.

Moreover, Iran had agreed to restrict enrichment to 3.67 per cent—enough for generating electricity—under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018. Bombing Iran, when it had agreed peacefully to restrict enrichment 10 years ago via diplomacy, to coerce it to sign a new nuclear treaty is ridiculous and useless.

According to Davenport, “Diplomacy significantly limited Iran’s uranium enrichment programme for 15 yrs (through 2031) & put in place more intrusive monitoring & weaponisation restrictions—permanently. Diplomacy is necessary.”

Trump’s malignant narcissism and lust for attention, admiration and publicity defy logic and sanity. Despite being the president of the oldest democracy, he aspires to be a dictator, fantasises about unlimited power and craves obsequiousness from other nations.

Trump desperately needed a diversion to boost his strongman persona, sullied by his abject failure to end the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars.

Bombing Iran was the solution.

The pattern a few days before the bombing showed Trump’s desperation.

Suddenly, he believed Iran was weeks away from developing a nuke despite the contrary assessments of the CIA and the DNI. He rubbished DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s March assessment that Iran wasn’t developing an N-bomb. “She is wrong,” he said two days before the strike.

Gabbard immediately fell in line. “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months if they decide to finalise the assembly,” she tweeted.

After the bombing, a similar pattern of rejecting facts with his theory emerged. Team Trump rejected the DIA assessment as “preliminary and low-confidence” by reiterating that Iran’s nuclear programme was obliterated.

Trump’s loyal coterie of intelligence chiefs rushed to bolster his claim. CIA director John Ratcliffe claimed “credible evidence” suggested Iran’s nuclear programme was “severely damaged” and Gabbard said that “new intelligence” showed that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “destroyed.”

Trump needed the world to believe in his leadership. The US bombed Iran’s nuclear programme to ‘oblivion’ with zero American casualties. Iran’s retaliation against the US was a joke compared to its earlier threats. Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. The US wasn’t dragged into another war.

If evidence suggests otherwise, Trump’s claim of obliteration would stand exposed. It would mean another bombing that would drag the US into a wider conflict—against the cornerstone of his policy of ending foreign wars.

The Iran issue is back to square one. Iran is adamant on enrichment and has made it clear that future negotiations with the US will depend on the assurance that its nuclear plants won’t be attacked again during talks.

According to a  report , Trump’s Mideast (West Asia) envoy Steve Witkoff and Araghchi are set to resume talks, the sixth in the series, in Oslo this week—but neither side has confirmed a date.

The Telegraph reported  Iran is ready for indirect nuclear talks with the US despite strong opposition from hardliners—and Araghchi hasn’t ruled out diplomacy.

However, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei has said that considering the “angry” public opinion, “no one even dares to talk about negotiations and diplomacy”.

Despite the Israeli strikes, the US bombing and Trump’s threats and claims of obliteration of Iran’s nuclear programme, it’s back to diplomacy.

The writer is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. He tweets as @FightTheBigots. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not reflect Firstpost’s views.