James M. Acton writes:

Speaking on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance stated that the Saturday U.S. air strikes on Iran had “set their nuclear program back substantially.” His comments came soon after President Donald Trump said that the operation had “completely obliterated” key nuclear facilities in the country. Satellite images of bombed buildings and cratered mountainsides certainly give credence to these claims.

But these statements from Vance and Trump are far too confident. In reality, Iran can likely reconstitute its program rapidly — perhaps in a year or so. What’s more, after the U.S. strikes, there is also now a real danger that Tehran will make the decision to go further than enriching and amassing uranium and actually build a bomb.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, stated that all three sites targeted by the United States, including Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordow, appeared to have sustained “extremely severe damage and destruction,” though he also warned that a final assessment “will take some time.” Even so, Iran probably retains highly enriched uranium, centrifuge components and expertise — a triad that will allow it to reconstitute its program rapidly.

First, it’s unclear how much weapons-grade or near-weapons-grade uranium the strikes even destroyed. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran had accumulated about 900 pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent by May 17 — that’s enough for a handful of nuclear weapons after further enrichment. The organization’s director general, Rafael Grossi, has publicly indicated that, before hostilities began, Iran likely moved some or all of this material from the storage facility where it was under IAEA monitoring. Indeed, Vance had hinted hours earlier that that the material was still in Iranian hands.

Iran has a decent shot at keeping that highly enriched uranium safe and secret. Such material is typically stored in small cylinders that are roughly the same size and shape as scuba tanks. Tracking them will be extremely difficult — even for the United States and Israel, despite their exquisite intelligence capabilities.

The equipment to further enrich this material is also likely still at Iran’s disposal. Even if Israel has destroyed all of its centrifuge production facilities (and that’s far from certain), Iran has a large stockpile of centrifuge components. The IAEA lost the ability to monitor these components when the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — aka the Iran Nuclear Deal — fell apart following the United States’ withdrawal in 2018. Like highly enriched uranium itself, centrifuge components are small, easy to move and difficult to detect.

Moreover, given that Iran evacuated key facilities before the U.S. strikes, most of Iran’s cadre of skilled scientists and technicians have presumably survived. Starting with uranium enriched to 60 percent and just 100 or 200 operating centrifuges, they could likely produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb in just a few weeks. [Continue reading…]