How Much Has Iran's Nuclear Program Been Set Back?

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Paul Ingram, a nuclear disarmament researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

Transcript

00:00Let's talk now to Paul Ingram, who's a nuclear disarmament researcher at the UK Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

00:06Thanks for coming on the programme, Paul.

00:08So we've got conflicting reports, haven't we, on all sides, really,

00:11about just how much of Iran's nuclear capability has been destroyed by these US strikes.

00:17What are your thoughts?

00:19Well, I think your correspondent earlier got it right.

00:23It depends on who's saying and what their interests are.

00:26I think that the evidence seems to point to the fact that there is extensive damage that's undeniable.

00:35That will have set back Iran's capacity to develop nuclear material for whatever purpose.

00:43And that, I think, is undeniable.

00:46How you time that is super complicated.

00:50And it's important also to recognise that if the intention is to create material for a nuclear weapon,

01:00then the quantities are not actually that great, much less than for commercial purposes.

01:07So I think Rubio's comment that the conversion facility has been destroyed means that there's no route to a nuclear weapon,

01:15I think it's patently absurd.

01:16I think that if the Iranians put their minds to it and they've spirited away this 440-odd kilos of highly enriched uranium,

01:26there is certainly the capacity to reconstitute in months rather than years.

01:33Most of this damage is around centrifuges and other parts of the fuel cycle.

01:40And with the knowledge they have, I think the Iranians could rebuild that.

01:47So what about this Iranian then that you say could have been potentially spirited away?

01:52What might have happened to that?

01:54Well, if I were the Iranians and I knew that there was a likely attack coming along,

01:59I would just take it somewhere safe, somewhere secret, somewhere that they know is not compromised.

02:05And that is somewhere that the agency will not have visited.

02:11Bear in mind that Iran has been the most heavily inspected country on the planet when it comes to nuclear facilities.

02:18It has engaged extensively with the agency.

02:21The agency has visited many, many, many sites in the country.

02:25But it can't visit all possible places.

02:29And so the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, will have found a space that the agency will not have been.

02:36And I would imagine, too, that they either already have or will develop quite quickly centrifuge cascades that could take it further,

02:46should they choose to do so.

02:47The key thing here...

02:49Sorry, go ahead.

02:50No, sorry, I just wanted to ask you what does happen now with this nuclear program,

02:53because it has just pledged to accelerate the civilian nuclear program,

02:57as well as suspending cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

03:01So what does happen now?

03:04Well, so it suspends cooperation, so everything goes dark.

03:09That's a really serious problem.

03:11That's probably the most important dimension of this whole issue.

03:15alongside the fact that the voices within Iran calling for nuclear capability

03:22will be much louder today than they were a week ago.

03:26And the Americans and Israelis have given Iran every incentive to try to race to a nuclear weapon.

03:32That's one side.

03:33On the other hand, there are still some areas of weaponization that Iran has not mastered.

03:39They certainly have experienced significant setback when it comes to the capacity to race.

03:47And so there's a lot of uncertainty.

03:50And that's why, when you have uncertainty, there's lots of room for political speculation, analysis and disinformation.

03:58And so when you have the U.S. president expressing great confidence that they've set this program back by decades,

04:05you know that that's not entirely true.

04:09Paul, great to get your thoughts today.

04:11Thank you so much for coming on the program.

04:12That's Paul Ingram from the UK's Center for the Study of Existential Risk.

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