68. Israel Attacks Iran: The Origins of the Iranian Nuclear Programme (Ep 1)

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A short time ago, the U.S.

military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordau, Natanz, and Esfahan.

Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.

Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror.

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.

Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally totally obliterated.

Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And that was President Donald Trump on June 21st announcing the incredibly spectacular results, obviously, Gordon, of the U.S.

military's strike on Iran's nuclear program.

This week, we are, and we're very excited about this, we are starting a series on Iran's nuclear program, and we are going to look at not the most recent strikes, although we're going to get there.

We're not going to start there, right?

This is not going to focus right away on that.

But we are going to go back, I think, Gordon, and give us a bit of the rest is classified take on the Iranian nuclear program and the first time it was targeted for attack and a very spectacular and targeted cyber attack.

That's right.

A kind of history-making cyber attack, which is going to send send shockwaves around the cyber world and around the world.

And yeah, we're recording this in the aftermath of a major traditional military attack on Iran's nuclear program, which just took place a few weeks ago by Israel and the US.

But it is a crisis that has been more than 20 years in the making, a kind of slow burn crisis over what Iran was doing at some of those nuclear sites that have got hit.

Now, we've looked at elements of this story before with our episodes on the killing of Mohsen Fakrizadeh.

How was the pronunciation for that?

I think it was okay, but it was still wrong.

I don't think you or I have actually managed to get an effective version.

I think it's Fakrizadeh.

He was Iran's top nuclear scientist, Iran's Oppenheimer, who was killed in 2020.

But we're going to go back even further than that to look at the first attempt to strike but slow down rather than obliterate Iran's nuclear program, which was actually, in an interesting way, an attempt to forestall exactly the kind of military action that we just saw a few weeks ago because of the concerns it might lead to a wider war.

So it is a story that kind of focuses on one of those sites that was hit, Natance, and which we've heard about a lot recently because it was struck by the US and Israel.

But yes, before it was struck by bombs in the air recently, it was struck by this cyber weapon, which many think is one of the most important moments in intelligence history and particularly in cyber history of the last few decades, is hit by this kind of cyber virus, which became known as Stuxnet.

And I think Michael Hayden, who was, he'd previously been the director of NSA, and then I believe at the time of this cyber attack, he was the director of the CIA.

I mean, he has said later, and we should also note, Gordon, that nobody that we're going to talk about in the story has claimed responsibility.

for this attack, right?

Shockingly, right?

So we're going to be totally relying on very good reporting that's out there on this.

I think we've got a pretty good idea who did it, but yes.

We should acknowledge it's never been.

We should acknowledge that nobody, the Israelis, Americans, nobody actually claims any responsibility for the story we're about to tell you.

And so Michael Hayden has.

talked about it, but he talks about it in this very circumspect way, you know, a lot of use of the passive tense when he's speaking.

But I mean, he has basically said, this is a former CIA director saying, that this attack really has echoes of August 45, right, and Hiroshima.

If you were to look at what is sort of the modern day equivalent of the use of nuclear weapons, the Manhattan Project, I think you could argue that it was the development of this cyber weapon that was turned loose on the Iranian nuclear program almost 20 years ago.

It's that big of a deal.

And I would also argue you can't understand the context for the strikes that just happened without some understanding of the very covert clandestine combat that has gone on between the West and Iran over its nuclear program over the past 20 years.

You need both stories to kind of understand how we got to the point where, you know, Trump has authorized these strikes on Iran.

Yeah, that's right.

Because we often talk about the shadow war that's been going on, particularly between Israel and Iran.

But this cyber story is part of that.

And Stuxnet, I think, is one of the pivotal moments.

It's a pivotal moment in the conflict over Iran's nuclear program.

But as that General Hayden quote implies, it is also about a much bigger story, which is the development of what some people call cyber weaponry and the vulnerability that systems have towards cyber attack.

And there's a lot of dispute about what cyber weaponry are and can you really equate it with nuclear weapons and Hiroshima or not?

And we'll come to that, I think, a bit later.

But there's certainly a sense that this was a very important and a world-changing moment, this attack on Iran's nuclear program, which happened a decade and a half or more before the military strikes, which we've just seen.

Well, and I guess this story will have a lot of very colorful characters in it.

But interestingly enough, it might make sense to just start with a place, right?

Which is Natan's, you know, a piece, a critical piece of what will become Iran's nuclear program.

That's right.

And Natan's is really the kind of key location which we're going to be looking at.

So So let's start our story February 2003.

Everyone's focus at that moment is on Iraq, next door to Iran, where an invasion is just weeks away, an invasion to prevent a weapons of mass destruction program, which it turns out doesn't exist.

Supposedly.

Supposedly.

Those WMD might still be out in that desert somewhere, Gordon.

You know, we just, we haven't looked hard enough.

We'll deal with that at a later date.

We haven't looked hard enough.

Let's park that controversial pill.

Let's park that for now.

Yeah.

But let's accept they haven't found anything.

So February 2003, that war is about to start.

And yet, in Iran, much less notice, something really interesting is going on because a real nuclear program is going to be glimpsed by outsiders for the first time.

And that month, a group of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, are heading to Natanz.

They're led by a guy called Ollie Hainonen, really interesting guy.

I've met him and talked to him.

He's quite a tough, tenacious Finn.

And he's going to become the expert on Iran's nuclear program.

And he's part of a small team of inspectors.

They decline a helicopter ride.

They instead drive about 250 kilometers south of Tehran.

Why do they decline the helicopter ride?

I wonder if they're worried about their safety.

I mean, helicopters, helicopters in Iran are sometimes

important people on board.

So instead, they go on this long car journey through this dusty countryside.

And the Tanz, it's kind of quite mountainous nearby, previously best known for its orchards of juicy pears, I'm told.

But

six six months earlier, August 14th, 2002, an Iranian opposition group called the National Council of Resistance of Iran had kind of surprised everybody by holding a press conference in Washington, D.C.

And they claimed at this press conference that Natants, just off an old highway there, Iran was building a secret facility.

It had the cover story of being a center for agricultural research on preventing desertification.

Good cover story.

But in reality, they claimed was part of a push by Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Yeah.

There's a whole bunch of these kind of slightly bonkers opposition groups that reside overseas, right, and have camped out overseas since 1979.

The most well-known would be the Mujaddini Kalk, the MEK.

I probably butchered that pronunciation, too.

Who are, I think, linked to the NCRI.

And it's a kind of interesting question, isn't it?

Why is this opposition group holding a press conference in DC and why are they revealing a secret nuclear program?

It's a good question.

I think there are those who might suggest that they hadn't discovered it themselves and were operating as a front for some other intelligence service who was keen to get the information out into the public.

I don't know what you think.

I think that's plausible.

I'm not accusing them of doing that.

They may have discovered it themselves and decided to publicize, but I think that's always been a kind of question about it.

I think it's probably a fair bet that for the rest of this series, series, if we don't know the answer, the answer is probably going to be the Mossad.

You'll be right more often than not,

if that's your guess.

And it would make sense if the Israelis want to put attention on this facility, the Israelis, whatever they initially had, whether it's imagery or some kind of local asset that collected the information on the facility and the Israelis were suspicious about it, it would not be that complicated to find a way through a cutout to get that information to a group that already despises the Iranian regime.

That would not be challenging.

It's plausible.

So they've made it public in August, and then there's months of wrangling and protests and delays as international inspectors demand access to this site to see what's going on.

Ollie Hainon, the Finn, had just taken over as the group responsible for Iran.

He'd been away from the Iran file for a few years.

He'd been looking at satellite images of the site, trying to work out what was going on there.

Very hard to see what's going on at these buildings.

They just show that something is being built deep underground in what looks like a well-protected bunker with layers of concrete above it.

And, you know, there's anti-aircraft batteries and things like that, all of which is suggestive of something more than a agricultural desertification plant.

Deeply protective of their desertification research.

Wouldn't you be?

I'm sure that's entirely normal.

So when they arrive finally at this agricultural desertification plant, they're escorted through a hall of pictures and exhibits.

It's interesting.

This is a display for visiting Iranian politicians.

So obviously it's like the people who are building it are kind of like, look at this glorious thing we're building.

Are they still claiming?

They're not claiming it's a desertification.

I think they've given up now.

It's a facility at this point, right?

Like, here's our hall of murals.

When the supreme leader comes, as he does every six months, we want to make sure it's, you know, has some official pomp and circumstances.

I think the game is up on that.

But one of the things that's interesting is that as soon as Ollie Hainonen goes into this facility, he is stunned by what he sees.

And he says, oh boy, this is a serious enterprise.

It's something which is already well underway.

There's a pilot plant which is above ground.

And there are already machines called centrifuges, cascade of about 160.

We're going to come back to what centrifuges are, because they're a vital part of our story later.

Gordon is going to explain how they work.

Yeah,

I'm going to do that.

Wait for it.

I've extracted a promise from him and listeners who tuned in for our our series on klaus fuchs and espionage around the first atomic bomb will remember that we have already explained in very crisp luminous detail how nuclear weapons work scientific detail scientific detail and we will do so again with centrifuges through the mouthpiece of gordon carrera on this it's coming soon it's coming soon so so as i said they're counter encountering this first in the pilot plant of some centrifuges which are underway but the crucial thing is below ground there's there's this huge cavernous hall with room for 50,000 centrifuges.

This is a big plant.

Again, not an agricultural certification.

And Ollie asks his Iranian escort how they'd managed to make such progress in developing these centrifuges.

They said they started five years earlier from the internet, he would recall.

I said, this cannot be possible.

Doing some

loose internet research how to build a centrifuge nuclear enrichment facility.

What was the search back?

There's like like ask jeeves there were a bunch of a bunch of iranian scientists in lab coats just cruising the web to figure out how you develop a centrifuge capacity program yeah so i mean the truth was this was beyond iran's technical capacity but for months they're going to keep up to this line that they've made these huge technical advances themselves i mean no one at the time kind of believes that and one of the inspectors who later goes looks at these centrifuges immediately could tell what they are because they are an exact copy the Iranian centrifuges of Pakistan's P1 centrifuge and in turn that's the exact copy of a design stolen a few years earlier from the European facility of Urenco which is a European enrichment company so the specifications the parts everything's the same and what's more inspectors would even find that some of the parts of the centrifuges in the tants had actually been used before

and would have some traces of enriched uranium which came from previous use.

So, all of that points a pretty clear picture of where this facility had come from.

Well, and Gordon, I think that's a great cliffhanger, right?

As we might say, to take us into the break.

And when we come back, we are going to find out all about this mysterious nuclear salesman who actually supplied Natans and whose exposure is going to help facilitate this really history-altering attack on the facility.

See you after the break.

I'm David Ulashoga.

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Well, welcome back.

I think, Gordon, it's probably worth going back even further in time.

We love going back way in time.

I do personally, at least in these episodes, go back as far as we possibly can.

And usually Gordon Carrera will try to edit it out.

But actually, Gordon,

you want to go back, which I love, and I'm here for it.

So I think it's probably worth stepping back a minute.

We've just set up Natans, right?

But go back and talk about the origin of this nuclear program kind of as a whole, because I think it does set up a bit of like, why?

are the Iranians doing this, right?

What's the motivation for having a bomb?

Yeah, yeah, which I think is important to understand and kind of takes us also through explaining what's going on today, I think.

So the Iranian nuclear program actually predates the 1979 revolution, which brings the Ayatollah and the clerics to power.

And back to the Shah's time before that, you know, there are plans to build a nuclear power reactor in Busheh.

He might have also been thinking it might be useful to have a bomb.

And, you know, you've got Saddam Hussein in Iraq next door, and the two countries are adversaries and are going to have a war together.

And they're each watching the other and thinking, well, what's the other doing?

And so when the 1979 revolution comes, initially, it's really interesting.

Ayatollah Khomeini says that he sees nuclear weapons as the work of the devil and un-Islamic.

So it's really interesting.

You know, at that point, it's off any interest in nuclear weapons.

But then the Iran-Iraq war starts and you get this long, brutal war.

through the 80s between the two countries.

And Iraq is going to use chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Iraqis, you know, are looking for the bombs, a nuclear bomb.

So you can see this kind of dynamic develops, doesn't it, where both countries are thinking, maybe we need the bomb just in case the other one gets it.

In the way we in the West, or at least in the States, I think typically talk about Iran, there's a tendency to go back to 79, right, and talk about the revolution.

I think that this war, this war that went on from, I think, 80 to 88, is a better lens through which to view the Iranian regime today.

The formative experience of the generation of people who are running Iran today was the war, right?

And I guess you could lump the revolution in there too, but it is an absolutely brutal conflict that I think drives, frankly, a lot of the militarization of the Iranian regime that we see today, right?

And

it makes a lot of sense if you come out of an absolutely catastrophic conflict with your neighbor, you know, you'd want this insurance card.

You would want a bomb, right?

And you'd probably be willing to sort of bend Khomeini's ideas about whether a bomb is Islamic or not for purely pragmatic reasons.

I think it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

So it looks like from about 1984, Iranian interest then picks up again in the idea of a bomb.

And the then president Ali Khameni, now the supreme leader, was one of the supporters.

I can see you smiling at my pronunciation.

I'm going to move on.

I'm always smiling.

Come on, man.

Ray of sunshine over here.

But he was one of the supporters of moving forward at least on a nuclear program.

Problem is building a bomb is hard.

You need help.

We've talked about this before.

This is not a straightforward thing to be able to do.

So where are you going to get that help from?

Now, the answer is Pakistan.

And it's been working on its bomb to counter India.

And the crucial figure here is a very interesting man called AQ Khan, who becomes known as the father of the Pakistani bomb.

He is the subject of a book.

He is.

I don't have the author here or the

exact title, but there's a book on him that we probably should commend.

What's the name of it, Gordon?

Shopping for Bombs.

Shopping for bombs.

Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the AQ Khan Network, written by a young upcoming author called Gordon Carrera.

It was my first book.

Oh, it was your first book.

My first book was on AQ Khan.

So that's why I'm a slight AQ Khan obsessive.

But we are going to say, we're not going to do the full wild story of his rise and fall because it is a great story involving the CIA and MI6 and Libya and all kinds of things.

But we'll do that in another series, I think, down the line because we'll get sidetracked.

There's too much there.

The key thing you need to know is Khan is a Pakistani scientist who comes as a young man to Europe and he works at a nuclear enrichment plant in the Netherlands, part of this company, Eurenco.

And at the time, he's young, he's ambitious, he's also a fierce patriot.

And Pakistan is engaged in this conflict, this on-off wars it's having at that point from India, and it feels the threat from India.

He may be living in the West, but he's not really a fan of the West.

It's fair to say, young Abdul Qadir Khan, AQ Khan.

And he's particularly not a fan of the idea that only the West gets to have nukes or gets to decide who has nukes.

So he's got this job and he's going to take crucially not just the designs.

for centrifuges, but also the contacts of where to get the parts you need.

So you need very specialized equipment, specialized steel, specialized ball bearings, all these kind of things.

And he's going to understand the network that is supplying the European facility.

And then he's going to take that and he's going to build his own network and use some of that network to, first of all, supply and build Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

But then, and this is the kind of crazy twist, he's going to start selling and passing on those designs, that material and the contacts of the network to other countries as well.

And he's going to do it to Libya.

He's going to do it to Iraq and Iran and North Korea.

So, you know, he's a nuclear salesman, which makes him a very interesting, rather dangerous man.

He's a commercial guy, you know, a real straight shooter with upper man.

Trying to make a living in the world.

Trying to make a living in the world.

Selling the designs for the nuclear program.

Now, should we see this as an official Pakistan to Iran trade or is Mr.

Khan freelancing?

Good question.

And there's a book on that, actually, if you'd like to read it with it.

Some of his deals are sanctioned by other people, it looks like, in the Pakistani military.

And some of them are kind of exchanges and deals, and some of them are money-making, and some move from one to the other.

And I think the Iranian one's kind of interesting because it looks like the first deals are in the late 80s with Iran.

And that looks a bit possibly state-sanctioned, or at least some elements of the Pakistani state knowing about it.

And he basically gives the Iranians a shopping list of what they need, where to get it from, allows them to buy some of the things through his network, although they also set up their own procurement networks.

And Iran isn't going flat out for the bomb.

It's just kind of getting some of the parts together.

But here's the problem.

Some of the parts they get from AQ Khan are not in a very good condition.

They're basically, they're secondhand.

They're cast offs from the Pakistani program.

And it looks like he's got a kind of warehouse in Dubai.

And it's like a clear-out sale.

A nuclear garage sale in Dubai.

Yeah, which also explains why, when the inspectors in the tents will find some traces of nuclear material, it's because they've been second-hand stuff, previous owner, Pakistan's nuclear program.

And one of the problems it means is that the stuff isn't working that well.

It's hard to use.

The Iranians start complaining that some of the stuff is useless.

Western intelligence is aware that something's going on, that there's some procurement going on by the Iranians, but they can also see they're struggling.

So there's not too much worry at this point.

So this is late 80s, early 90s.

But then Khan does another deal with the Iranians.

And this one is more secret, so it's not known about by others.

And it only emerges later on.

This is kind of mid-90s.

$3 million, two briefcases.

I mean, it's like a proper kind of spy film stuff.

Iranian officials bring those briefcases, leave them at a lavish apartment used as a guest's house by Khan in Dubai.

And this is a kind of more significant deal this time around because it's more designs, more components, and for a more advanced, advanced, what's called the P2 centrifuge.

So now with that, the Iranians can now, in the late 90s, step up a gear in terms of what they're doing.

This whole period does say something interesting about the way that the Iranians moved toward the capability to have a bomb, because they seem to move very slowly, cautiously, and at every stage to have these kind of potential off-ramps where you kind of get the sense that they haven't fully made a decision at any point.

They're going to move along this chain of having the set of capabilities that you need to eventually have a bomb, but they're not making some kind of mad dash to get one.

That's exactly right.

You know, this is happening in 2007, but when the Syrians have decided they want a bomb, I think for very similar reasons.

I mean, this is a really rough neighborhood, right?

And you have a lot of strong men who are running these countries who feel deeply insecure.

And so getting a bomb in that context makes sense.

The Assads want a bomb.

They literally just go and essentially buy a program from North Korea and put a facility in the eastern desert that is an exact copy of Yongbeyan, right?

They're not building this massive homegrown program.

And they're moving in sort of comparison to the Iranian program.

The Syrians moved quite quickly.

It's a weird thing, like, because I think the Iranians probably would already have a bomb if they had tried to go really quickly, but they don't.

Throughout every stage, they kind of move very slowly and cautiously, it seems.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

And it's not maybe our image of a country that is racing somehow for the bomb.

That's absolutely not.

Because, you know, we're talking here, this is 30 years ago that they were doing some of these deals.

I mean, so they do, though, in the late 90s, move to a kind of more clandestine program.

Previously, they had something called the Tehran Nuclear Technology Center, which is a bit of a kind of giveaway as a title.

And then then they moved to the Calais Electric Company, which is in the suburbs of Tehran, which they will claim is a watch factory, the Iranian use of cover watches.

But it's actually where they're testing their centrifuges.

Maybe we should move it from the Tehran Nuclear Technology Center somewhere else.

Yeah,

maybe that's a sitting duck target as we develop our nuclear program.

It's at this stage, though, we should, I mean, friend of the pod, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, is at this point starting to be the sort of head honcho of the program as well.

Yeah, exactly.

And they are starting by 1999 to kind of master how you build a centrifuge.

We're going to come back to them.

Don't worry.

You haven't missed your centrifuge explanation.

Those who are waiting for it.

Yeah, it's coming.

It's going to come.

Gordon Carrera is going to explain it.

He's drawn up some charts.

He's got charts and graphs to show us.

So what's interesting is Western intelligence has missed this second Khan sale.

But from 2000...

The Mini McCloskeys, Gordon.

The Minnie McCloskeys are working out that Iran is doing something at Natanz.

They are seeing, you know, by 1999, they've kind of perfected the technology enough to build a facility.

And that facility from 2000 are going to be Natanz.

And, you know, I was told that kind of the analysts were scouring satellite photography to look at this site.

And the Iranians seem actually aware of when satellites pass overhead so that they can avoid doing anything sensitive at that time, which I guess in those days you didn't have...

24-7 coverage.

The satellite only moved over at a certain point.

Maybe now I'd imagine it's a bit different from that.

So they seem to be aware aware from 2000, but secretly in Western intelligence that something is going on.

And they're trying to work out, you know, do we go public?

What do we do about it?

Then in 2002, that opposition group makes it public.

And now the inspectors finally get in in 2003.

And then you get this cat and mouse game with the inspectors, in which the Iranians are kind of like, nothing to see here.

It's just a nuclear power facility.

Nothing awful, nothing nuclear bomb related.

But the inspectors can see that there's a lot of clandestine work going on.

And they learn about other sites and other facilities.

And every time they try and go to them, the Iranians have basically bulldozed the sites in advance.

In some cases, actually raised the topsoil from the sites, obviously because they don't want any environmental sampling to pick up traces of nuclear work there.

So the inspectors are hunting for it, and the Iranians are hiding it at this point.

I mean, obviously, hiding things that sort of raises your suspicions, you know, if you're the IAEA, but Iran at this stage isn't violating any international agreement that it's a signatory to.

And frankly, I guess it's possible.

I think it's not the case, but it's possible that they could be doing all of this solely for the purposes of a sort of civilian nuclear program.

Yeah.

In theory, when you look at just at where they were in 2002.

Yeah.

It's nice to hear you defending the Iranians and what they're doing.

But

yeah, Iranian nuclear program, hero or villain?

Let's debate.

But you are right.

The key thing is that you're allowed to have a peaceful nuclear program.

You are entitled under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to have a peaceful nuclear program, but not to be developing a bomb.

Even building an enrichment site is not against that because it can be entirely for peaceful purposes.

And this is the kind of crucial point, isn't it?

Is that enrichment, this process, can be used both for nuclear power and for building a bomb.

And it's a kind of dual use facility or technology.

And that is almost the key problem, is that it's not something which proves that you're building a bomb.

So even though the inspectors are finding evidence Iran is hiding something, you know, they find traces of nuclear material.

I love this on door frames and on the rubber seals of toilets, because these are things that the Iranians haven't cleansed and raised to the ground.

But even when you find these, the Iranians just go, well, you know, it's all part of our peaceful nuclear program.

We might be being a bit evasive about it, but that's all it is.

Nothing to see here.

Move on, Mr.

Inspector.

That's right.

It's just been us, you know, querying ass jeeves and just building this program.

Early Google searches have gotten us here, Mr.

Heinan.

There is nothing to see.

And I guess I would imagine they also played this game where if you're the Iranians, you can have this little dance with the IAEA where you say that, well, there's maybe pieces or a part of a site you can't go to because there's not nuclear stuff going on here, but it's a sensitive military installation or something like that.

Right.

And so you get into this weird dance.

I always found the dance between the Iranians and the IAEA to be fascinating because it just seems sort of absurd.

Like we all all kind of know what's going on, and yet there's still this kind of, I don't know, this theater, right, around the inspectors having access or not having access.

And I mean, it goes on for almost 20 years.

20 years or for years.

It's crazy.

Yeah, it's mad.

And they're putting cameras in places trying to spot what's happening in the Iranians invading it and building other sites.

It's wild.

Is it time?

It's time.

It's time for the nuclear lesson.

And we should note that in the notes that Gordon has prepared, we are now to a point where it says, David, time for a the rest is classified nuclear lesson.

And there is a warning here, which I also agree with, which is if you, dear listener, if you're a nuclear physicist, let's say, you might just want to like just fast forward for two minutes, right?

Just kind of pull that little dial forward.

In all honesty, though, Gordon has been working tirelessly over the past few weeks to come up with the few paragraphs here on how this is going to work.

So, Gordon, we're in your hands.

Yeah, thanks for that buildup.

Okay, here we go.

We've done how to build a nuclear bomb before, remember?

Klaus Fuchs.

This is enrichment.

The rest is classified.

101 guide to how to enrich uranium.

Yeah.

Okay.

Two routes to a nuclear bomb.

So you can use plutonium from a nuclear power plant or you can use enriched uranium.

We're going to be talking about the enriched uranium route, okay?

So you can mine.

raw uranium from the ground.

Anybody can do it.

Anybody can do it.

You might have some in your garden, but the good news is, you'll be pleased to know, is that stuff won't spontaneously go nuclear and cause an explosion or fuel a nuclear power plant.

It's not fissile in itself, the stuff you get from the ground.

That's because it mainly consists of uranium-238, which is very stable.

That's my second favorite uranium isotope.

Your favorite, though, is uranium-235.

Yes, that's how it is.

That is the good stuff.

If you're building a bomb or making nuclear power, that's the stuff you want.

But only 0.7%

of the raw uranium you mine from the ground is the good stuff.

Only 0.7%.

So if you want to go nuclear, you need more of the good stuff.

So you need to take your raw uranium and you need to increase the percentage of U235.

And that, David, is called enrichment.

Okay.

That's good.

A minus.

I give you an A minus.

Thank you.

And it's not easy.

That's the other thing I should say.

So one way, and there's different ways to do it.

You can do it with kind of lasers and other things, which sounds more high-tech.

But the way most people do it is to turn it into a gas and then you put it into a centrifuge.

This is a tall metal cylinder.

This is the second hurdle that Gordon must

climb here.

It's about the size of a large hot water cylinder.

Do you have a hot water cylinder?

You kind of know what I mean.

It's a kind of large fridge, American-style fridge, you know, big one, but doesn't have the two doors.

It looks like we would call them a hot water heater.

Okay, I guess.

In your home.

Yeah.

But it's not a hot water heater because inside is a rotor which spins at supersonic speeds.

By spinning it so fast, it's going to separate the heavier U238 from the lighter 235 only a tiny bit by spinning it.

But then if you feed what you get out of that by having separated it into another centrifuge, part of what's called a cascade of centrifuges, each time you can slowly enrich the amount of the good stuff, the 235 that you want, and enrich it from that 0.7% upwards.

So if you enrich it to about 3% to five percent u235

then you can use it as fuel for a nuclear power plant but if you keep enriching it above that so same process you just keep going you can get towards what you need for a nuclear bomb ideally you need it at about 90 for a nuclear bomb so the problem is it is the same technology you use and the same raw material to enrich for power and enrich for a bomb.

So how was that?

I think that was pretty good, Gordon.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I don't like giving you compliments as a general rule.

I think listeners will know that, but that was well done.

And I guess it's also worth saying that it's not a linear progression.

Yeah.

The early percentages take more time and effort.

It's much harder to get from, you know, 1% to 5% than to get from 60% to 65% because of important science stuff.

There are scientific reasons and mathematical reasons why that is true, but I can confirm it is true that the early stuff is harder.

So once you get to, you know, above 20%, where it's starting to get usable and dangerous, it starts to get much quicker to turn it into the good stuff for a bomb.

And that is relevant from really the standpoint of the whole kind of arc of Iran's nuclear program going up to the most recent strikes, because if you are doing a whole bunch of stuff early on, that is the hard stuff,

but that is also in theory compatible with the story that you're just developing a civilian program, as your program matures, your timeline starts to get squished, right?

And so if you're the Israelis, for example, you could have the Iranians at whatever, 40%, 50%.

And all of a sudden, if that's taken you six years, it's not like you have another six years to get to 90%, right?

So the timeframe starts to slow down.

What Iran is doing is very interesting and very logical because it isn't racing for the bomb.

It is dangerous if you race for the bomb.

Instead, it's looking to have what it needs to go for a bomb if and when the final decision is made.

The idea is to shorten what's called the breakout time, the gap from the decision to actually go for a bomb to actually having one.

And, you know, at one point that can be years to have a breakout capacity and to turn that highly enriched uranium into bomb-grade material.

But, you know, the more you accumulate and the higher you enrich it, you shorten that breakout time.

And I think that's the thing which Iran has been trying to do over the years is shorten the breakout time without racing for a bomb, which would then lead to an immediate attack.

And I think that's the way to understand what Iran's game has been is to kind of build that capacity up as much as possible.

So it's got the possibility of going for the bomb rather than making the decision.

It's worth saying, it's not enough just to have the highly enriched uranium.

You also have to turn it into a weapon.

You have to shape the metal.

You have to make it into a bomb and work out how the explosives will cause the chain reaction to turn into a kind of nuclear bomb.

Yeah.

That's what Klaus Fuchs was working on.

Yeah, that's what Klaus Fuchs was working on, exactly.

And you have to work out then how to miniaturize that and then put it onto a delivery system, a weapon.

So actually, you know, there are a lot more stages beyond this highly enriched uranium.

And it's interesting because we're in this kind of early 2000s period and the Iranians are nervous about being attacked, especially because, you know, the U.S.

Because the U.S.

had attacked the country next door for having allegedly weapons of mass destruction, which didn't actually exist.

Which didn't exist.

And the most infakries a day is sitting there thinking, oh, Roger Light, we've got a real one.

So what's interesting is, and this is the U.S.

national intelligence estimate, is that the Iranians stop weaponization in 2003.

So weaponization is the bit after you've got the highly enriched uranium to turn it actually into a bomb.

All the signs are, and this is the official U.S.

intelligence assessment, which has lasted until this year, is that the Iranians have not been weaponizing the nuclear material.

They've not been trying to build that final stage of turning the enrichment into the bomb, just trying to perfect the centrifuge progress, the process, and accumulating the highly enriched uranium.

So they're trying to kind of get to the line or as close to the line as possible, but without inviting an attack.

And I guess it then raises the question, if we kind of shift over and think about some countries in the region that might not be super excited about the Iranians having a bomb, of, okay, what do, in particular, the Israelis, do about this program?

Because obviously they're becoming aware in, I mean, I'm sure the Israelis are probably aware in the 90s of some of this stuff, right?

But by 2002, 2003, it's got to be clear to the Israelis that the Iranians have embarked on this journey.

And this is where Mossad, the Israeli security establishment, have got to start thinking about how do they prevent it from happening, right?

And that's the question.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, for much of this period, including now as we're recording this, is obsessed with Iran, isn't he?

He sees it as a kind of existential threat to the state of Israel, which he is personally wanting to do something about right through this period.

So he is pressing Mossad to say, I want to do something about this.

I want options to attack it.

I want military options.

And, you know, and this is the interesting thing looking at it now, back then he's saying to the U.S., I want to attack it with a military strike, but I want you to be in with me because I need you,

American help, to finish the job and to be able to do it.

Very similar outline to what has just occurred.

I mean, it's exactly, exactly, you know, he's been saying the same thing for 20 years.

You know, this cannot exist and I want to attack it and I want you to help me attack it.

And I guess the pressure is going to grow from about 2005 when Iran elects a new hardline president, Ahmadinejad, who is a more radical figure.

And he starts to push forward with enrichment.

And, you know, they're starting to install those centrifuges in the tans.

We should say, though, it's not Ahmadine Najad who's making...

these decisions on the nuke program, right?

I mean, this is

driven by, yeah, the supreme leader and the coterie of military and security types who are around him.

But I think it is important just to go back to the Israeli perspective for a second, is you're absolutely right that Nanyahu has been obsessed with Iran for a couple decades now.

But you can, at least I can understand why the Israelis, it's not fair, I mean, because the Israelis have their own bomb, have their own bomb, right?

So this isn't fair, but from the standpoint of just Israeli security, if you've got a regime in Iran that is rhetorically committed to your country's destruction, you don't want them to have a bomb.

And I think Ahmedinejad is kind of, he's this firebrand kind of guy.

Again, he's not making the decisions, but I mean, he's the one who's saying things like, you know, wipe Israel off the map and push it into the sea and all this kind of stuff.

And, you know, it just, it seems like at some point, if you're the Israelis, you're going to say, look, we don't know exactly what it's going to look like if they get a bomb, but we just cannot allow it to happen.

And it's interesting, isn't it?

Because this is the time of the George W.

Bush administration in the U.S.

And he'd put Iran on the axis of evil and he'd gone to war in Iraq over a nuclear program.

And he kind of certainly, in Washington, they're fearing that an Iranian bomb will also lead to other countries wanting the bomb.

But this is an administration in Washington, which is still reeling, you know, at this point, 2005, where we are, from what's happened in Iraq.

They haven't found the weapons of mass destruction.

They're mired in an insurgency at this point.

This This is not the moment to be getting involved in another war in the Middle East, is it?

There's no desire, no appetite to join with the Israelis and starting airstrikes, which could lead at that point to a war and a wider war.

So there's a dilemma there for Washington.

This is the stage where Bush essentially says, look, what do I have?

Two options here.

I can either let Iran go nuclear, which doesn't seem like a great idea.

And we should say from a U.S.

security perspective, I think one of the major fears is that an Iranian bomb leads to a cascade in the region where all of a sudden, do you have a Saudi bomb?

Do you have a Turkish bomb?

And in a already extremely militarized region, right, with all kinds of cross-cutting rivalries, like the last thing you want is to be having to play 40 chess with a bunch of states that are all armed to the teeth with nukes, right?

So I think some of the U.S.

standpoint, insofar as you can separate it from the Israeli perspective, is the idea of this cascade, right?

Yeah.

And so, you can either let that happen or go to war.

And to your point, Gordon, we're in Iraq, we're in Afghanistan at this point.

We have the Iranians smushed in kind of a sandwich, which is ironic because they're actually developing a nuclear weapon.

And of course, we're in the two other countries around them.

Bush says, I need a third option, right?

This is the stage where he says, I need something else on the table, which sounds like a great call for covert action, I would say, Gordon.

Says the former CIA man.

It is right.

You want a third option, you say, one short of war.

That's right.

Enter the spooks.

And maybe there, Gordon, with the tease of covert action upon us, something very clean and deniable, but also effective.

The plans are going to be developed for that third option.

It is going to be short of war.

It's going to be something that has never been done before.

It is going to be a program that is the modern day equivalent of the Manhattan Project.

And it is going to to be code-named Olympic Games.

So maybe there, with that tease of Operation Olympic Games upon us, let's end.

And when we come back next time, we will see how this weapon is developed.

And David, don't forget, if people can't wait to find out how the Olympic Games evolve, they want to see what happens in the big event.

They do not have to wait.

You can be in on the games right away by joining the Declassified Declassified Club at the restisclassified.com and there you can join the club and get immediate access to all the episodes in this series.

Otherwise though, we will see you next time.

See you next time.

It's David Uleshoga from Journey Through Time.

Here's that clip that we mentioned earlier.

If you look at all of the accounts of the fire at this point, as we get to the end of Sunday the second, the first day, this fire is not behaving in any way the way fires traditionally did in London.

And there are some people who've argued that it was becoming a firestorm, that the heat and the wind and the movement of air caused by the fire was feeding it, was becoming self-sustaining, as it were.

John Eveling, who's a great writer and a diarist of this moment, he talks about the sound of the fire.

He said it was like thousands of chariots driving over cobblestones.

There are descriptions in Peps and elsewhere of this great arc of fire in the sky.

I mean, imagine that everything around you is coloured by the flames, yellows and oranges, and above you is this thick black smoke.

This is a city you know, these are streets you walk, this is a place that's deeply familiar to you, and it looks completely otherworldly.

It looks like another, like a sort of landscape you've never seen before.

People describe the fire almost as if it's supernatural.

If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time, wherever you get your podcasts.