Mission Accomplished? What We Know About The State of Iran's Nuclear Program.

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Claudia Grizadis.

I cover Congress.

We've also got NPR senior science editor and correspondent Jeff Brumfield with us.

Hi, Jeff.

Hi, sir.

President Trump took another victory lap this morning after this weekend's strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran will never rebuild its nuclear.

From there, absolutely not.

That place is under rock.

That place is demolished.

The B-2 pilots did their job.

They did it better than anybody could even imagine.

But experts say when it comes to Iran's nuclear program, it's too early to declare mission accomplished.

Today, we're going to break down what we know about how successful the strikes were and talk about the fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel that was announced last night.

So, Jeff, let's start with you.

The goal of Operation Midnight Hammer was to destroy Iran's nuclear program.

President Trump said it was obliterated.

What do you know about how successful it was?

Well, I think we can say that it definitely set the program back and probably set it back quite a bit.

So if we talk about Operation Midnight Hammer, this was a group of B-2 bombers that flew from Missouri 18 hours direct to Iran.

And the bombers actually struck two facilities.

One was a uranium enrichment site at Natans, and the other one was the main target at Fordo.

This was a uranium enrichment site deep inside inside a mountain.

The Israelis could not reach it with their own weapons.

And so these bombers used these 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, tried to punch through the rock.

And as far as we can tell, they probably did do quite a bit of damage to that site.

Now, a submarine also launched cruise missiles as part of Operation Midnight Hammer.

That hit a third site.

Those missiles struck a place called Isfahan that has a lot of uranium research that goes on there.

And so taken together, those three strikes and the Israeli strikes that have been going on for the past, you know, almost two weeks now have done considerable damage to Iran's program.

But I wouldn't say it's exactly mission accomplished.

Yeah.

So is it fair to say that these strikes hit their targets, but we don't know if they met their objectives?

Yeah, I think that's exactly the right way to say it.

They definitely hit their targets, but there's a lot we we don't know, not just about the uranium, but about various parts of Iran's nuclear program.

So I spoke to Corey Hinderstein.

She's a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and here's what she had to say.

I would not consider the nuclear program destroyed.

I would agree that it has been set back, but by how much and with what kind of permanence, I think is...

a big question, Mark.

And Hinderstein was actually in charge of monitoring Iran's program under the Biden administration.

And so she says we just don't know much because partially the international monitors that have been there have all been pulled out.

And partially these places are destroyed, but presumably not completely destroyed.

And so there may be equipment there.

You know, there's also these stocks of highly enriched uranium.

This stuff is very mobile.

You know, it can be taken out of these facilities.

It can be put into cars.

It's thought that maybe around 10 vehicles would be all it takes to move this stuff around.

And this uranium is not quite bomb grade, but it's very, very close.

And Iran has enough for nine or 10 weapons.

So this stuff is still out there somewhere.

We don't know if it's been destroyed, along with other parts of Iran's program.

So Jeff, you're saying that this enriched uranium can be moved relatively easily.

So do we know that's what's happened here?

Well, let me tell you what we know.

We know that there were trucks at the two sites where we think the enriched uranium was being stored in the days before the American strike.

So we know that Iran was moving something around, but we don't know exactly what.

There is satellite imagery that shows us that.

The other thing we know is that Iran has stopped telling the International Watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, where its equipment and uranium is.

They have informed them that they have taken these measures.

They may or may not be moving it.

So the bottom line is there's evidence that they probably took steps to secure the stuff and move it, but we don't know if they did for sure, and we certainly don't know where they took it.

So it's possible that Iran still has this enriched uranium stockpiled somewhere, but do they have the capability now to keep enriching it?

Right.

So the stockpile they have right now is about 60% enriched, which is actually very, very close to bomb grade, much closer than you might think.

The question is, can they put that uranium back into centrifuges, the machines they use to enrich it, and can they enrich it further?

And again, we don't know.

So we know Iran has the ability to manufacture centrifuges, but we don't know how many they've made or where they might be stored.

or if they can pull them out and set them up somewhere.

We just don't know.

Now, I think it's fair to say based on the evidence we have that the existing centrifuges have been badly damaged or destroyed.

I don't think Iran could do this overnight, but could they get this material to weapons grade if they really wanted to?

I think the answer is perhaps, yeah.

President Trump, however, is very confident and proceeding with policy as if Iran is no longer a nuclear threat.

He appears to be arguing that that Iran is sort of welcomed back into the world because there's now a ceasefire as tenuous as it may be.

Aaron Powell,

one of the really interesting things that I've been hearing today and talking to people who know about Iran's program is that if you really do want to stop it, guess what?

You have to go back to negotiations now with Iran and try and reach some sort of deal where you have some insight into what they have left and what they're going to do with it.

And so far, it doesn't seem like that's really been talked about much within the administration.

But I've been speaking to experts both who've served under Trump and under Obama and Biden, and they all say the same thing.

The only way to ensure Iran doesn't start for Obama again is to actually go back and negotiate now that you've done these strikes.

All right, well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more on reaction from Congress when we get back.

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And we're back.

And Claudia, you've been tracking the reaction to all of this from Capitol Hill, going back to the U.S.

strikes on Iran, then Iran's response, now the news of a tentative ceasefire, which depending on the moment, either seems like it's holding or seems like it's in trouble.

Let's start with Republicans.

What are you hearing from them?

Right.

It's very tentative now, and we've seen basically a response that is moving with each of these shifts in terms of where Israel and Iran is at the moment.

For example, right after the strikes, we saw Republicans overwhelmingly supportive of the president.

Again, this is the most united Trump has been with Republicans in Congress.

So they're largely backing anything he's doing at this stage, even if there's some disagreements on whether he should consult Congress or get authorization from Congress.

Now, as we move further into this week, for example, with the ceasefire, Congress was supposed to receive briefings today on Iran and they were canceled for the Senate and the House.

We've seen a range of reactions there.

I talked to Chairman Roger Wicker of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

This is a Republican, and he said he was disappointed.

Right now, we are understanding that it'll be moved to later in the week, but there are plenty of questions of where things stand right now.

And what I've heard from sources, there's concerns that the situation is still very hot.

It's not clear this ceasefire.

is going to hold.

And so clearly, Republicans remain supportive of the president, but they're also on edge in terms of what are the next steps.

Yeah.

And just in terms of Republicans, it's been fascinating to watch the evolution.

There are certainly some MAGA Republicans who were pretty concerned that President Trump had even authorized these strikes to go forward.

Some of them have evolved to being very happy with how it turned out.

Right, exactly, because we did see Republicans starting to step out and raise concerns about Trump's decision to move ahead with these strikes.

And we saw, for example, Thomas Massey, a Kentucky Republican, he wanted to push forward a piece of legislation known as

AUMF.

This is the authorization for use of military force.

This has been an ongoing debate for decades here in terms of forcing the president to come to Congress before such strikes happen.

But Massey backed off after word of this ceasefire came out.

We know Democrats, for example, in the House are pursuing their own AUMF legislation.

They want to vote in the House.

Now, on the Senate side, we may see that happen.

Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia is pushing that.

He has Republicans who have said they will support him.

So it's possible they're looking at a vote on this later this week on Thursday.

But when you look at dissenters, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was raising concern yesterday that the efforts of the the strikes and what could come next really flew in the face of America first.

And we've seen others say, I'm worried about the regime change language, such as Warren Davidson of Ohio in the House.

But now, again, that we have the ceasefire, we're seeing Republicans largely step back.

They want to see how this plays out, and they're hoping it holds.

Claudia, what about the Democrats?

I mean, have they sort of found a unified way to talk about what's been happening?

Yeah, you could tell this weekend that they were struggling.

They were slow to come out with a statement.

I mean, one of the first things we do is we look for reaction when we have major events like this.

And there were plenty from Republicans supporting the president, but it took a while to hear from Democratic leaders and other Democrats.

It's a tough issue to navigate because they don't want to be in a position where they're defending Iran.

But at the same time, they want to push for the president to come to Congress for consultation, for permission to do these kind of strikes.

So they have unified more in the last couple days.

For example, we saw Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer at the last minute called an impromptu press conference with reporters, and he was furious.

Here's what he said.

Senators deserve full transparency.

There is a legal obligation for the administration to inform Congress about precisely what is happening.

What are they afraid of?

So, Claudia, Congress in the Constitution has the war powers.

Congress is supposed to be the one that declares war.

But this just has not happened in recent memory.

This is one of the many roles that Congress has essentially just punted to the executive.

And they've been unable, despite some people like Senator Tim Kaine, who you mentioned, they've been unable to pass another authorization of the use of military force since the Iraq War.

Is there any chance that that changes?

Or what could Congress's role be here if they aren't willing to assert their power?

Right.

This morning, we heard from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who talked about exactly that.

And he said, basically, the overwhelming way of doing business in America is for the president to act, to use military force.

So basically making that point that that authorization that's been a desire for many members here is a thing of the past.

And he talked about as a body in the last 250 years, almost every time it's the president leading that military action.

There is no consultation with Congress.

So it really is also another reminder of Congress kind of surrendering that control to the president, Republican-led chambers doing this and being so closely aligned with the president and allowing him to take the lead on such massive decisions like this.

All right, well, let's leave it there for today.

Jeff, thanks so much for joining us.

You're welcome.

I'm Tamar Keith.

I cover the White House.

And I'm Claudia Grizeles.

I cover Congress.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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