Has Trump stopped Iran developing a nuclear weapon?

ABC Listen.

Podcasts, radio, news, music, and more.

Hey there, I'm Erin Park, and my new podcast, Expanse, Nowhere Man, is about why in 1999 a young American wandered into one of Australia's most deadly landscapes, alone with barely any water, on purpose.

Spanning three decades and two continents, this story took me places I never imagined.

Stick around at the end of this episode of Politics Now to hear a taste of what I've got for you.

US President Donald Trump has declared a ceasefire has been brokered between Israel and Iran.

Iran has refuted the claim and said there is no agreement on any ceasefire, while the Israeli Defence Forces claim Iran has launched a fresh wave of missiles.

It comes just hours after Iran struck a US base in Qatar in what appears to be a restrained response to US strikes strikes on its nuclear facilities.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed the announcement of a ceasefire and stated that the safety of Australians in the region remains his key priority.

But big question, of course, will the ceasefire hold?

Welcome to Politics Now.

I'm Patricia Carvellis and I'm joined on the podcast by the ABC's Ben Knight, who's a former Middle East and US correspondent.

Ben.

Hi, Patricia.

Very exciting to have you.

It's good to see you again.

I've been watching you, and you've been doing such a brilliant job really explaining a very complex situation.

I just think I was in the right place at the right time and filling that gap while the correspondents tried to get some sleep, but they weren't getting much.

No, they haven't been getting much, neither of you.

So that's what we've got here.

It's just after midday when we're recording this Australian Time.

It's been a long day for you already.

I heard you describe it as a sort of head-snapping morning.

So let's just step back and see what happened this morning.

Yeah, it was really

a head-snapping morning.

So I sort of woke up at four o'clock and because we are where we are and we're doing what we're doing, you can't help but reach for the phone and try and just find out where the world is at.

And I woke up to see that the Iranians had launched their counter-strike against the Americans.

It was sort of a weird day yesterday because we were sort of in this holding pattern and trying to guess, speculate about what that might look like.

And this morning we found out it was a missile strike against a US military base in Qatar.

So that was obviously pretty concerning.

And then after that we found out that in fact the Iranians had warned the Qataris and effectively the Americans that it was coming.

So they managed to evacuate.

No one got hurt.

Most of the missiles, I think probably all of them, got shot down.

So it was a show of strength.

It was

a bit of face-saving enough to say we responded without sort of provoking that cycle of retaliation with the Americans that we were very worried about.

I think I've seen from the Iranian news sources that they told a different story about that in Iran.

I think they'd said they destroyed the US military base.

That's not the case.

So that was okay.

So this is encouraging.

Hopefully that's it.

We've drawn a line under the exchange of fire between the US and Iran.

So now we have the, well, let's get back to the conflict between Iran and Israel.

And that was ramped up.

That had been escalated overnight as well.

In fact, the Israelis themselves were saying that this was their most intense attack on Tehran since this began 11 days ago.

Why would that be?

Particularly because it wasn't attacking nuclear sites anymore, which is how this whole thing started, of course.

It was all about the nuclear sites, getting rid of them.

this was not on nuclear sites this was on the uh the assets of the regime it was a base of the revolutionary guard it was a university it was the gates of evan prison the notorious evan prison as as it as it's always known because it is exactly that it's it's the it's a hellhole and home to uh political prisoners dissidents journalists, you know, all sorts of people who the regime wants to hide away and punish.

So it was an interesting, interesting target.

I think what it's turned out to be is something that Israel has done before, and that is get some massive hits in before a deadline looms.

And it was the deadline, we didn't know it was coming, but it was coming.

And that's when Donald Trump dropped that Truth Social post saying there's a ceasefire.

And it was

bizarre.

It was bizarre.

And in total Donald Trump fashion.

And I think we're so across this man, even sort of people just listening would feel like Donald Trump experts.

That's how much he's been in our psyche for the last decade, that he even named the war.

Like he, he, what did he call it?

The 12-day war.

It will be known into the future as.

So he's literally writing history contemporaneously.

It's wild.

And trying to coin the language, owning the solution.

It's very much to construct his own narrative around what's happened.

Yeah, he's very, very much got an eye on history.

He doesn't hide it.

He put out a post,

I think it was just a couple of days ago, complaining that he hadn't won the Nobel Peace Prize despite all of the conflicts that he's resolved around the world.

And it was interesting because Benjamin Etanyahu has had his conversations with Donald Trump in private, but he's also had them in public.

And the ones that he has in public, the language that he uses is quite interesting.

He obviously has an idea about

how to work Donald Trump or how to engage with Donald Trump is probably a better way of putting it.

But he sent out a birthday message to the U.S.

President.

And

history will show.

And the greatest president that

just...

It's flattery.

But it's also the use of language is very much telling Donald Trump that he has earned his place in history as one of the great ones.

And that's something that appeals to the president.

And it was interesting, you saw the same sort of wording, as you said, in the post that he put out announcing this ceasefire.

God bless the United States.

God bless Iran.

God bless the world.

God bless the Middle East.

It was effusive.

It was.

I want to go back to the strike that Iran has made on Qatar, because I think it is fascinating that a regime that has been so feared, that it's the idea that these bunker-busting bombs would one day possibly be used and that it would be sort of Armageddon for the world.

And then to see what

might be spun internally in Iran as, you know, a great action, but really was a very muted response, even giving the U.S.

time to evacuate.

There has been no U.S.

personnel that has died as a result of this.

What's that all about?

What's happening for the regime?

Yes, they're telling one story to their population, and they can do that.

They control the narrative as an oppressive theocracy, right?

But at the same time, are they not demonstrating to the world, or they are to me, Ben, that they're perhaps a toothless tiger?

Yeah, they've been that way for some time and it's been stunning.

You go back two years ago and Iran was feared.

genuinely feared, not just because of its own military power and not just because of the belligerence it had shown towards Israel and basically has done since the 1979 revolution, but there is a reason why language like wiping Israel off the map, that was actually people attribute that to the Supreme Leader.

It was actually, I think, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, people might remember him, and I think that line was disavowed by the Supreme Leader.

But it's the kind of line that sticks, you know, and it's pretty hard to get that out of your mind.

So two years ago, Iran had its own power, it had its own belligerence, but of course it exercised its power

through its proxies largely.

And so that's Hamas in Gaza, that's Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, and also the Assad regime in Syria.

So that's a very, very powerful network.

People say that Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terror in the world, but you've clearly clustered around Israel.

That is a very dangerous network to be in charge of.

Well let's have a look at what's happened since.

The Gaza War is still going.

Hamas has been seriously degraded.

Hezbollah...

Perhaps even more so, Hezbollah was the biggest non-state military force in the world.

Well, I don't know if it is anymore.

I don't know what other non-state military force there is, but it's not what it was.

Let's just put it that way.

And even

to the extent of killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, I mean, that seemed unthinkable.

And

not just weakened, but humiliated.

People will probably remember the Mossad operation with the exploding pages and the mobile phones.

It was a sort of classic Mossad operation, and it was embarrassing for

Hezbollah, not just because of the nature of it and just the very visual nature of people checking their pages and having it blow off in their face, but just because they'd been infiltrated so heavily or just fooled so apparently easily.

Let's move across to Syria.

The Assad regime is gone.

And then

on top of that, I mean, clearly Israel, Benjamin Etanyahu,

saw this moment and took it.

And when they did take it, it was once again absolute ascendancy by the Israeli military.

They controlled the skies pretty much from the beginning.

They hit the missile launches and other military infrastructure, which severely restricted Iran's ability to retaliate.

When the ballistic missiles and the cruise missiles did make it over to Israel, the missile defense network, incredible missile defense network, filtered out about 90 to 90%, 95% of them.

So look, some got through, they did damage, people died.

But Iran...

all of a sudden in the space of,

in terms of the Middle East, you know, the blink of an eye, is just absolutely not what it was.

And I guess that's why you saw Israel pushing that advantage.

Now, the aim, as we know, was to destroy...

any capability for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

Now that we're here, I don't know if that's been achieved.

Well, that's the big question now.

So Donald Trump announces the big ceasefire.

We're still waiting.

We're recording this on a Tuesday in the middle of the day to see if it holds.

It hasn't even started yet as we speak.

There's still salvos going across.

There's still a bit of time.

So there's the fullness of time to see whether that sticks.

And then there's the devil in the detail, so to speak.

What is the deal on nuclear enrichment?

What is that?

What's that going to look like?

What has Iran agreed to?

What is Donald Trump able to demonstrate about what he's achieved beyond his own headlines?

I mean, he literally writes his own headlines.

He doesn't even have to wait for anyone else to write them.

He writes them.

But there will be questions about whether this has how far it's put put back the program,

you know, what sort of state they're in.

And then the question of regime change, which he's even dabbled in rhetorically.

These are the questions we don't know, Ben.

And I feel like they're actually the pretty key questions in many ways.

This is not the end.

That's for sure.

What we have, or what we think we have, is a ceasefire.

That's good.

That's good for everybody.

What we don't have is another nuclear deal.

And I'll just go back for a little bit of history here.

There was a nuclear deal.

It was called the JCPOA.

It was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

It was a deal that was negotiated with Iran by the Obama administration.

It had Russia, it had China, and it had Europe on board.

And the terms of the deal were essentially that Iran would be allowed to have a civilian nuclear program for energy, but it would only be allowed to enrich uranium to around 3%.

And it would also have to open itself up to regular inspections at any time, basically, from the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.

In return for that, it would get billions of dollars in sanctions relief and start to be able to rebuild its economy, which was in the toilet and is still in the toilet.

When Donald Trump was campaigning to become president, he

said that the Iran deal was a terrible deal and that he would get rid of it and he would come up with a much better deal.

That didn't happen.

He got into power, he cancelled the deal, I think it was in 2018, and

never ever got around to

doing a new deal.

Nor did Joe Biden, for that matter, it has to be said, but it's interesting.

And I suppose this gets to just a little tangent, one of the other points.

Things can happen.

but they can have consequences that take a long time to come back around.

And it's interesting that Donald Trump is the one who cancelled the Iran nuclear deal.

You could argue that it's led to the situation we are in today because

there were no weapons inspectors going in and here is Donald Trump actually reaping the consequences of that decision.

Break something and puts it back together like with steel tape.

Yeah so at the moment we have a ceasefire.

That's great.

What are the long-term consequences of this one?

And then we come back to okay so

what's the next step?

Is the next step to do a new nuclear deal with Iran?

Well that's now I think much much harder.

In fact, I was just looking at some Newswire reports before.

I think Russia have said, we're not going to be part of it this time,

it's difficult to see Iran negotiating with the United States in the same way it did back then because

essentially Iran says we were, we were kind of in these discussions and then we were lied to.

We got attacked by Israel and then we got attacked by the U.S.

while we were supposed to be in this situation.

The other side of that is, of course, that people say Iran was simply doing this in order to keep kicking the can down the road.

It's easier to keep negotiating and negotiating while you were potentially working on a nuclear weapon.

You're buying time essentially.

Exactly.

But also, look, and it needs to be said,

the United States never presented any evidence.

that Iran was in fact producing a nuclear weapon.

There are some very important questions that Iran needs to answer about its nuclear program.

Why did it have a stockpile of uranium that had been reached to 60%?

Not 3%, 60%.

What are you doing that for?

We don't have an answer to that one, you know.

But there's no evidence.

And in fact, the director of national intelligence in the United States, Tulsi Gabbard,

gave the assessment of the entire American intelligence community, from the CIA down through all of the intelligence agencies of all of the branches of the U.S.

military that said, our assessment is that Iran is not.

building a nuclear weapon and that the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has not changed his mind on his 2003 fatwa, which says we're not going to build one.

Donald Trump was asked about that and he said, well, she's wrong, they're wrong, and never presented his evidence.

So let's now go back to 2003, when Colin Powell, the Defense Secretary under George W.

Bush, in the lead-up to the Iraq War, the month before the Iraq War,

went through the motions of doing what you're supposed to do under the UN Charter, and that is, you go to the National Security Council and you present your case.

He did that.

The evidence that he provided turned out to be faulty to say the least and but at least went through the vote.

There was a process.

That's a very

process.

Donald Trump in this instance in striking a foreign country has ignored both of those things.

He didn't go to the

UN Security Council and he didn't present the case.

He didn't present the evidence for it.

That's changed things, I think.

I think it's a really significant shift and it's one that increasingly we are hearing questions about.

I don't know if the answers are being provided or if they're even adequate at all.

But that brings me actually to our own Prime Minister's response.

He was quick off the mark releasing a statement welcoming the ceasefire, as you'd expect.

Obviously, anyone would welcome a ceasefire,

saying that Australia was continually urging de-escalation and diplomacy.

But I put this to you.

He then did an interview on Sky News.

We just watched that, just come off the back of that, again, being asked questions basically about whether this action now had vindicated, you know, the Donald Trump's actions.

And that's the big question.

If Donald Trump is able to demonstrate, and we have to wait still, too early to call it, but that a ceasefire holds, and he will be on a victory lap.

Look at me, I'm not sure.

A genuine foreign policy achievement to have achieved a ceasefire, that's for sure.

But through a flawed process, and then

does it not

make legitimate or strengthen that road that the US has taken, which doesn't follow international law, which sets dangerous precedents for China?

And so we are in a kind of wicked position in terms of being able to say these are the rules, we all need to stick to them, because we can't say that anymore now.

No, no, exactly that.

It's, you know, the US has bent the rules before.

but it hasn't broken them in this way.

And there was a time,

we all know that since 1945 we've had this rules-based order, we've had the United Nations and its purpose has been to prevent,

its reason for being, has been to prevent these conflicts between nations.

And there have been times when American presidents have been rock solid on that.

But you're going back to the Eisenhowers.

This

as you say,

creates some kind of precedent.

What does it mean for Taiwan?

What does it mean

for Russia and Ukraine?

Not that

much has been done there.

Well, his resolution of that conflict in one day hasn't really

transpired.

No, but

does it whittle away the argument that the US

could make,

perhaps under a different administration, if it chose to, to say this is not how we do things.

You're in breach.

I don't know.

Would that have made a difference anyway?

You know, I put it to coalition figures yesterday on afternoon briefing and I thought some of the answers were really fascinating, something to watch.

The answers were essentially the rules-based order hasn't been working for ages.

You know, it's fantasy land.

You know, Matt Canavan, who is more radical, but said to me, for instance, that, you know, we're living in, it's

basically the idea that it's nostalgic, you know, and it sort of broke my brain a bit because is it nostalgia or was it the rules that we all adhered adhered to that we said we would keep trying to reinforce?

When did we vote on getting rid of the rules-based order?

Where's the consensus on that?

I mean, and

this is, of course,

the big issue that we all face.

We're living in a world that is dominated by the United States as the world's biggest economy, as the world's biggest military, the most powerful military that's ever existed.

And the United States has changed the way it goes about things.

We have been, we are in an alliance with the United States.

It makes it very difficult for

the Australian government, whichever party is in government,

to be too critical.

For example, I mean, Penny Wong was kind of asked about whether the US action in attacking Iran was legal, didn't quite get there, but it's a very, very difficult dance for Australia to do and for the other allies to do.

But essentially, when did we agree to go all the way with DJT

in getting rid of that rules-based order?

We don't have a choice.

No, we don't have a choice.

And we keep talking about how significant and important it is, but then we are prepared to park it when it suits us.

We clearly didn't want to be the only nation that stood out.

We didn't want to stand out from our allies.

The Australian government government is obsessed with trying to get the AUKUS deal to be delivered.

There was no appetite to risk that by antagonising the United States.

And so playing it safe here was also part of the calculation.

You've got, I mean, that's quite obvious.

Australia going out and criticising this, I don't think that the Albanese government had the stomach for it.

Could you see it?

Oh, no, not at all.

And

it was never going to happen.

It was not, you know, sitting there watching or wondering which way this is going to go.

It was watching

someone navigate an incredibly difficult diplomatic, political minefield, essentially.

But yeah, whatever the United States did was going to be okay.

Obviously, those boundaries haven't been tested to the extremes yet, but this was a big one, and it was a difficult one.

And as I say, it leaves us

in an interesting place.

So, might is right,

and that's, I guess, okay when the might is on our side.

But what about a time when it's not?

Yeah.

Ben, final thoughts.

I'm just looking at some breaking news and there's been, Israeli media is reporting and showing many pictures of a significant missile strike in Israel's south.

An Iranian rocket has struck a large building, blown off the site of it.

You know, that's all within the deadline of the official ceasefire, to be clear.

But if it does emerge to be, have many, many consequences, you can sort of see Bibi Netanyahu not playing ball.

Just playing around with that idea.

Israel, if it thinks that Iran is on its way to developing another nuclear weapon, you can expect that Israel will strike again.

And I guess the big question that I have is, given where we are, Has Iran been deterred from building a nuclear weapon?

Or, considering that we understand it does still hold some significantly enriched uranium, has the technology, the regime is still standing, but it has been backed into a corner.

It's just had been struck by the United States that if it wants to survive, perhaps its best option is to go down the Kim Jong-un Road rather than the Muammar Gaddafi road, who gave up his nuclear weapons and died in a ditch.

And that rather than being deterred from developing a nuclear weapon, Iran, which may or may not have been doing before this, has now been encouraged to race towards developing a nuclear weapon.

Overnight, its parliament voted to remove Iran from the International Energy

Authority, Atomic Energy Authority, to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

That means it's closed to inspectors.

That puts it in the company of North Korea.

That's the other major power in the world that is not a member.

So this is not over yet, and we might have a ceasefire now.

If we don't have a nuclear deal,

we could be back here.

Yeah, and I think that's a very, very important take, that we are

in a very, very uncertain territory, even if something is declared with capital letters.

Ben, you've been the perfect podcast guest today.

Thank you.

You've been the perfect host.

We're perfect.

We sound like someone we've reported on.

Tomorrow I'll be joined by David Spears for another edition of the podcast.

We'll be recording after the opposition leader Susan Lee's National Press Club address.

If you have a question for Fran and I on Thursday, you can send it to the party room at abc.net.au.

See you, Ben.

Thanks, Ben Kate.

Soaring temperatures, a lack of water, and sand dunes every 500 meters.

It's one of the most inhospitable places on earth.

It's August 1999, and something strange is happening in the Australian Outback.

When I got there, it was just organized chaos.

It's one of the most extensive searches ever mounted in the Great Sandy Desert.

A well-to-do young American has dumped his belongings and walked out into the Great Sandy Desert.

A white guy from America, what hope has he got?

They'll be looking for a body.

He sent a postcard to his parents in America just saying, I'm heading into the desert.

Goodbye.

Triggering a media sensation and one of the biggest searches Australia had ever seen.

Once the Americans arrived, it became a lot more bizarre.

We really need to be what we call sempra gumby, always flexible.

He insisted that people use his radio handle, gunslinger.

Are you taking the piss?

But there's one problem that no one's got an answer for.

How do you search for someone who doesn't want to be found?

I felt it was his choice to choose not to come out of the desert.

I knew he couldn't be content with living a life unless he did this.

My name is Erin Park and I've been obsessed with this story for years.

And I'm not the only one.

Why would a fit, intelligent young man with everything to live for plunge into one of the deadliest landscapes in Australia on purpose?

It's very easy to dismiss it as crazy, but I think when you dive deeper into it, you see that it's not crazy.

It's a story spanning three decades, two continents and some strange encounters.

I really don't know how I started off in the desert in Northern Australia looking into this and now I'm in bloody Alaska looking for a porcupine.

Every little thread was even more glittery and sparkly and fascinating and quick.

And it polarised opinions the world over.

Were his actions selfish or inspired?

The backlash was pretty fierce.

And it turns out this desert where Robert Baguki went missing is keeping other secrets.

What Robert Berguki did here is just the tip of the iceberg.

We've got a lot of people missing.

It remains a mystery, you know?

At a time when so many of us feel lost, what's the most extreme thing you do to feel found?

The idea of being out here alone scares the hell out of me.

I ain't no Robert Berguki, that's for sure.

And at what cost?

Death will come, and I'll be ready for it.

This is season five of Expanse, Nowhere Man.

Find it on the ABC Listen app and all the usual places.