Was Iran really about to build a nuclear bomb?

Sam Hawley: Israel has been ramping up pressure on Donald Trump for the US to join its strikes on Iran. But does the Iranian regime have the nuclear capability? The Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, says it does. Today, nuclear weapons expert Ben Zala from Monash Uni on Iran's nuclear program, and whether Israel really needed to strike now. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Ben, we're watching missiles fly between Israel and Iran, and it really at this point does not look like this will be a short war, does it?
Dr Ben Zala: No, unfortunately, I don't think it does. Israel is clearly taking its time in hitting various sites.
News report: After weeks of threats, explosions across Iran.
Dr Ben Zala: It's rolling this out over a number of days now, even in the initial wave of attacks when it began on Friday. For those of us in the sort of nuclear community who were watching this, there were a number of sites that we were quite surprised that hadn't been hit straight away. They then were hit over the course of the weekend.
News report: Smoke rose over the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the IAEA, saying it had contacted Iranian authorities about radiation levels.
Dr Ben Zala: So this is clearly planned to be carried out in waves. This doesn't feel like just a targeted strike on the nuclear program. This really is much wider.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, Israel's even hit the state broadcaster in Iran while it was on air. It's targeting deep inside the capital. That's right. As well, isn't it? It's very extensive.
Dr Ben Zala: Yeah, it is extensive. And those sort of strikes, as you say, against state TV, against airports, against various military facilities, not just those related or that in principle could be related to the nuclear weapon program, a clandestine program. This really is a very large scale strike. And so this appears to be part of the gambit here that the Israelis are thinking, we know that we can't necessarily wipe out the entirety of the nuclear weapons program if that's what the Iranians were getting close to building. So what we're going to do is actually go one better and see if we overthrow the actual regime.
Sam Hawley: And Ben, are we any clearer at this point on what Israel has actually achieved, how much of Iran's nuclear program it's wiped out at this point?
Dr Ben Zala: Look, we're not terribly clear on that and we won't be for some time. Of course, the Israelis are making grand claims about having really set back the program by a long way and that they think they've collapsed the underground facility at Natanz, which is an enrichment plant and so forth. What we do know from the satellite images that we can see for ourselves, that certainly the above ground facilities have been very, very extensively damaged. So there was an above ground section at the Natanz site, for example, and you can look at the satellite images before the attack and look at it afterwards and there are just buildings that are no longer there, structures that are blown wide apart. But what we don't know is how extensive has the damage been, how successful have these attacks been on the underground facilities. And these are facilities both at Natanz and also at Fordow, which the Iranians have been digging deep, deep underground and fortifying. They've been putting these under layers and layers and layers of concrete for years. They've been expecting an attack of this kind from Israel at some point. And so they've been preparing the sites to try and withstand as much of an attack as possible.
Sam Hawley: And as I understand it, the US is the only nation that has the type of weaponry that can get to some of those bunkers.
Dr Ben Zala: That's right. Yeah. What we call bunker busting weapons. So what you would really need is the kind of 20,000, 30,000 pound bombs that only the US has. And so far there doesn't seem to be any indication that the US giving these to Israel to use or allowing them to use it. And the US seems to be completely avoiding being drawn into doing any military strikes themselves.
Sam Hawley: Well, Donald Trump says he had nothing to do with the Israeli strikes. He left the G7 summit in Canada early, where world leaders had been discussing the crisis.
Donald Trump, US President: Well, I think this, I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table. They want to make a deal. And as soon as I leave here, we're going to be doing something. But I have to leave here. I have this commitment. I have a lot of commitments. I have a commitment to a lot of countries.
Sam Hawley: In an interview with ABC America, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated he does want America to be drawn into this.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli PM: To have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities. Today, it's Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it's New York. Look, I understand America first. I don't understand America dead. That's what these people want. They chant death to America.
Dr Ben Zala: I mean, the best news for Israel would be joint strikes carried out by the Americans and the Israelis, because that means they would have the full force of the American military behind them. That seems unlikely to me for now. If in Iran's response in its retaliation towards Israel, if that in the end broadens out and targets certain American interests in the region, particularly things like military bases or any other military capabilities that are in the region at the time, that could be very difficult for Trump to avoid.
Sam Hawley: Let's look, Ben, more deeply at why Israel has attacked now. Israel's Prime Minister says Iran could have made a nuclear bomb in a very short period of time and it posed an existential threat to Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli PM: If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months, less than a year. This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival.
Sam Hawley: Tell me, does the evidence as far as we know, support that view?
Dr Ben Zala: Not as far as we know, no. That's the simple answer. The answer to this is there have been estimates around how close Iran is to building a nuclear weapons program that have been around for years. And according to the Israelis, they've been months away from building the bomb for years now. So the Israeli assessments and estimates are a little hard to take on face value. The best assessments from the expert community, those who follow these issues, but as it were, don't have a dog in the fight, aren't trying to influence policy one way or the other, is somewhere around two to three years is probably a more accurate estimate. They certainly weren't anywhere near having a workable nuclear weapons program in the timeline that Netanyahu was talking about when he said a year or even months. And they certainly didn't have assembled usable weapons ready to go or even close to doing so. Whether, even if they did, that would represent an existential threat to Israel, that really depends on how you feel about the whole issue of nuclear deterrence. I mean, the strange thing in this is that the Israelis are demonstrating to us that they actually don't believe in nuclear deterrence because they have their own nuclear weapons program. They've had it since the late 1960s. It's sort of the world's worst kept secret. Israel neither confirms nor denies the existence of its nuclear weapons program. But thanks to leaks from Israeli scientists and assessments from intelligence agencies from all around the world, we all know that they do. And therefore, if Iran was to be successful in building a nuclear weapons program, if you think nuclear deterrence works, which is presumably why you have a nuclear arsenal in the first place, well, there's no reason to think that the Iranians wouldn't be deterred from using them by an Israeli nuclear retaliation, just like anyone else would. So the idea that Iran getting nuclear weapons suddenly poses an existential threat to Israel is a strange one when you factor into account that Israel itself already has nuclear weapons and has had them for over half a century.
Sam Hawley: The US, of course, has worked pretty hard, hasn't it, over many years to strike a deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear program, with varying success, of course. That all fell apart, didn't it, during Trump's first term? He actually tore it up, a nuclear deal, and now he's been trying to negotiate a new one, right? And now that's also fallen apart. But why on earth did Israel act when negotiations were still underway?
Dr Ben Zala: Well, I think the key to the timing here is that they allowed the Trump administration to engage in what the Israelis clearly knew and what the rest of us clearly knew was a doomed attempt at trying to restore some kind of diplomatic solution here.
Donald Trump, US President: I gave Iran 60 days and they said no. And the 61st you saw what happened. Day 61. So I'm in constant touch. And as I've been saying, I think a deal will be signed or something will happen, but a deal will be signed. And I think Iran is foolish not to sign one.
Dr Ben Zala: As you say, the Iranians had already done this. They signed a deal in 2015 with the Obama administration, which put very effective limits on Iran's program. It didn't completely prevent it from developing a secret program or being close-ish to, but it put it a long way back. And it was working very well. And the Iranians were, regardless of how we feel about the regime, were actually abiding by the terms of the deal. And when Trump got into power, he was very opposed to it simply on the grounds that it was an Obama deal. That means that these most recent rounds of talks, when Trump in his second term decided that he wanted to restrike a deal, they were really up against it right from the outset, because you would have to convince the Iranians to come back and trust you again, despite the fact that it was that very administration that had pulled out of the last deal. And now the Israelis can say to the Trump administration, look, we gave you a chance, we allowed the talks to go on, you tried your best, but the Iranians are just throwing it back in your face. We face no decision here. We just have to act now. It gives them an air of legitimacy in their relations with Washington.
Sam Hawley: Mm, all right. Well, Ben, as we discussed, Israel is likely to need America to completely wipe out Iran's nuclear program, those bunker busters. What do you think happens next? If Israel can't destroy it completely, this program, would Iran increase the speed of developing, say, a nuclear bomb?
Dr Ben Zala: That's certainly one of the options. And I sadly, I think it's probably fairly likely. I would be surprised if Iran remained a signatory to the NPT. In fact, we've already seen Iranian lawmakers overnight putting together a bill for the Iranian parliament to suggest that Iran should withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty. Only one state has done that. That was North Korea. They withdrew in 2003. And then three years later, they tested their first nuclear weapon and have been nuclear armed ever since. That's probably the more likely outcome that I would see Iran going down in the short term.
Sam Hawley: Mm, all right. Well, Ben, if Israel actually achieves what it says it wants to, what do you think? Would that actually make the Middle East a safer place in the long run?
Dr Ben Zala: Not necessarily. It certainly will make Israel's other neighbours around them think twice about its relationship with Israel. I mean, the reality is Israel's Arab neighbours have been getting closer to Israel, closer but not close to Israel in recent years. But I think we would see other states in the region think very, very carefully about how they manage their relations with Israel, because this has demonstrated that if the Israelis deem you as a threat, you are fair game for a full-scale military attack. It will also shift the power balance in the region somewhat. I mean, this is a good news day for the Saudis, for example, who are no friends of the Iranians and really see themselves as regional rivals to Iran. So this is not the kind of thing that will necessarily bring peace and stability to the region instantly. And we will still have a region in which there is one nuclear-armed state in Israel, and the rest of them are not. And that means that the rest of them can be subject to sort of nuclear blackmail and nuclear coercion, because they don't have that deterrence relationship. There's no parity in their military relations.
Sam Hawley: Ben Zala is a senior lecturer in international relations at Monash Uni. His work focuses on nuclear weapons. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead and Adair Sheppard. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.

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