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I\u2019ve spent the past several days telling incredulous reporters that Israel\u2019s bombing campaign against Iran, even with help from the United States, looked anemic\u2014and that it would, at best, set Iran\u2019s nuclear program back by several months, maybe a year if we were lucky.<\/p>\n
Now CNN<\/a>, the New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Reuters<\/a>, and even a sweating Fox News<\/a> are reporting on the conclusions of a five-page classified assessment of the strikes that was prepared by the United States\u2019 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It turns out that I may have been overestimating<\/em> the effectiveness of the bombing campaign. That report indicated that the strike has set Iran\u2019s nuclear program back by one to two months on the low end and less than a year on the high end.\u00a0 (The CIA estimate that it would take Iran \u201cyears\u201d to rebuild the facilities that were destroyed<\/a> is beside the point, since no one thinks Iran will do that.)<\/p>\n The DIA assessment relies on both satellite imagery and signals intelligence. People such as myself, working with open-source information, can\u2019t eavesdrop on Iranian phone calls, but I can look at satellite imagery. And I see the same thing.<\/p>\n When Israel started its bombing campaign against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went out of his way to highlight material, saying<\/a> that \u201cIran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs\u2014nine.\u201d This material is the MacGuffin in our tale of woe. Iran would have to further enrich this material to weapons grade, but it could have done so quickly, in a matter of about three weeks, at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant.<\/p>\n Where is that material now? According to the U.S. intelligence assessment, Iran moved it early on in the conflict, likely to a secret location. That, by the way, is precisely what the Iranians told<\/a> Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). U.S. officials, no doubt embarrassed by the fact that they had no idea where the material went, tried a number of ridiculous explanations. Vice President J.D. Vance claimed that it was buried. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed<\/a> that trucks couldn\u2019t move in Iran without being almost immediately targeted by Israel, even though there are numerous satellite images showing trucks arriving at the facilities, followed by images of more trucks covering the entrances with dirt. We now know that the DIA thinks the material is on the lam.<\/p>\n If Iran dashes to a bomb, it will have to further enrich<\/a> this material and eventually convert it from its current form\u2014gas\u2014into metal hemispheres that can be assembled in a bomb. These steps are called conversion and casting. Vance and others have sought to downplay the dangers of the missing material by claiming<\/a> that Israel and the United States had completely eliminated Iran\u2019s ability to enrich uranium and fabricate uranium metal.<\/p>\n Even before the latest DIA assessment, it was clear that this was false and that Iran retained a significant ability to reconstitute its uranium enrichment program.<\/p>\n Shortly before the bombing campaign began, there was a contentious meeting of the IAEA board of governors on June 12, from which several important items of information emerged. This meeting has largely been forgotten in the rush of events that followed the bombing campaign, which we now know had been long planned and was on hold until the expiration of the 60-day window that U.S. President Donald Trump claimed<\/a> he gave to Iran.<\/p>\n During that meeting, Grossi indicated<\/a> that the IAEA had \u201clost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and current inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows \u2026 which it will not be possible to restore.\u201d What that means, practically, is that the IAEA no longer knows how many centrifuges Iran has stockpiled or where they are all stored. Iran could use any centrifuges in storage to replace centrifuges that have been destroyed or to set up new centrifuge facilities.<\/p>\n In addition to whatever centrifuges Iran already has, it also can make more. In recent years, Iran has constructed a giant underground facility near Natanz, under the picturesquely named Pickaxe Mountain (Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La). After Israel conducted a 2021 attack that sabotaged a nearby workshop<\/a> that made centrifuges, Iran moved the production equipment here. Israel and the United States didn\u2019t strike this underground workshop at Pickaxe Mountain, but Israel did strike the empty buildings elsewhere that used to house the equipment. Perhaps they used a time machine.<\/p>\n Where would Iran install these centrifuges? The assessment reportedly states that Iran \u201cmaintains secret nuclear facilities that were not targeted in the strike and remain operational.\u201d One of those sites, according<\/a> to Jennifer Griffin at Fox News\u2014a really good reporter who asks tough questions<\/a>\u2014is the so-called third site for enrichment.<\/p>\n Yes, there is a third<\/em> site for enrichment beside Fordow and Natanz, which the U.S. hit. After the IAEA board of governors found Iran in violation of its obligations under its safeguards agreement, Iran announced<\/a> that it had completed construction of a new centrifuge facility in a \u201csecure location\u201d and was ready to begin installing centrifuges there. Iran invited the IAEA to inspect the facility, but then the bombing happened.<\/p>\n The location of this centrifuge facility is not publicly known, although Grossi has said that it is near Esfahan. Neither Israel nor the United States attempted to attack this facility, as best I can tell. Iran could start installing centrifuges there any day now.<\/p>\n Iran has, historically, been able to install one to two cascades of centrifuges a week. (A cascade is set of centrifuges, usually about 170.) The country could install a Fordow-sized replacement facility in less than three months. The first bomb\u2019s worth of material would be available two to three days after that.<\/p>\n There may be other potential enrichment sites. In 2010, when Iran revealed the Fordow enrichment plant, it also claimed that it planned to construct 10 such sites<\/a>. While U.S. officials at the time thought that was bluster, a few months later, Iran indicated that it planned to start construction on two more facilities<\/a> buried deep underground in the following year. It seems likely that Iran\u2019s new facility was constructed in this time period but not brought into operation until now.<\/p>\n Surprisingly, one of Iran\u2019s options is to reinstall the centrifuges at Fordow. The Defense Intelligence Agency report concludes that while the strike damaged the electrical system and collapsed the entrance tunnels, the underground enrichment hall remains intact. This helps explain why all these other underground facilities weren\u2019t attacked. They are even deeper than Fordow. I guess the U.S. is going to need a bigger MOP<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear where Iran would turn this material into a bomb. While the aboveground buildings at the uranium conversion facility have been destroyed, the tunnels nearby appear to be untouched. Iran also has a large underground facility outside Tehran, called the Shahid Boroujerdi project, which is next to the military site called Parchin. This tunnel complex was originally constructed to convert uranium hexafluoride into metal and cast the metal hemispheres for nuclear weapons. Iran never brought that facility into operation, although that may change now. While Israel struck other parts of the Parchin military site, the Shahid Boroujerdi tunnel\u2014like the other underground facilities\u2014remains untouched.<\/p>\n All told, Iran likely retains the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that the IAEA said Iran had produced, as well as an extensive network of underground facilities to produce centrifuges, enrich the material further, and assemble it into a small stockpile of nuclear weapons if that\u2019s what it chooses to do. It\u2019s no surprise that the DIA thinks the program hasn\u2019t been set back all that much.<\/p>\n One to two months! Even if the program was delayed two to three years, as some Israelis claim<\/a>, the much-maligned 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) delayed Iran\u2019s program by many times that. Opponents of the diplomatic solution complained that many of its provisions sunsetted after 10 or 15 years. (And even this claim was misleading, because many other important provisions were intended to last forever.)<\/p>\n Yet these same people who complained that 10 or 15 years wasn\u2019t long enough for a deal are now forming up to cheer a measly few months of delay by bombing\u2014a delay, mind you, for which they have absolutely no plan what to do with, other than to do it all again when Netanyahu\u2019s poll numbers start to slip. I don\u2019t blame them\u2014they\u2019ve never wanted a diplomatic solution, just regime change\u2014but I don\u2019t understand how they get away with it. We hold treaties to impossibly exacting standards, as though any agreement made by humans can be perfect, but then we grade military operations on a curve.<\/p>\n While a lot of experts focused on the limits in the JCPOA\u2014how many centrifuges, what type, and how much enriched uranium Iran could have\u2014I consistently argued that its real value was how much it enhanced our ability to detect covert facilities<\/a>. This included cradle-to-grave safeguards starting from the moment that the uranium was mined, monitoring of the machines used to make centrifuges, measures that limited where Iran could enrich uranium, and extraordinary rights for the IAEA to look around.<\/p>\n These measures weren\u2019t perfect, but we\u2019re now learning how blind we are without them. And most importantly, these measures effectively prevented Iran from using underground facilities such as Fordow to enrich uranium for years, something that we now know the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs couldn\u2019t dream of doing.<\/p>\n Perhaps it is hard to square the limited impact of the bombing with the spectacular appearance of a bombing campaign, with its screaming missiles and thunderous explosions. It says a lot that one of the most impressive displays of airpower<\/a> in history did so little to damage Iran\u2019s nuclear program. This is precisely why, at the outset of the campaign, I made clear that the strike<\/a> would likely only succeed if the Iranian regime fell.<\/p>\n While regime change by airpower always seemed to be a desperately long shot, it was somehow still more plausible than the obliteration of a large, dispersed, and deeply buried nuclear program such as Iran\u2019s. I think that the Israelis knew that, too. After all, Netanyahu named the operation Rising Lion<\/em>, after the national symbol of prerevolutionary Iran. Israel\u2019s national animal is the gazelle.<\/p>\n