00:00Spencer, I want to start with those two headlines. And you specialize in looking at satellite imagery, understanding the extent
00:06of damage from attacks and what's actually happening at these facilities. I know it's still early days, early hours at
00:13this point, but what can you tell us about the Yellow Cake production plant in Yazd province and the Condub
00:19heavy water research reactor that was targeted twice, at least according to semi-official news agencies?
00:25Yeah, well, first off, thank you for having me on the show. Really appreciate it. So the Condub research reactor,
00:33it's also known as the Iraq IR-40 reactor. It was a reactor that was built many years ago, possibly
00:40for the intention of producing plutonium. And plutonium is one of the key resources that are used in producing different
00:47types of nuclear weapons, for example.
00:49During the June 2025 war, it was targeted, the dome of the building was penetrated, and likely the reactor was
00:58destroyed. It wasn't operating at the time, so there's no release of radiation, etc.
01:03Israel at the time also attacked the heavy water plant. They damaged one of the last stages in the heavy
01:09water production. Heavy water is a very important chemical compound that is necessary to operate heavy water reactors.
01:18It's also a source of neutrons in nuclear weapon. So destroying this facility is incredibly important to creating bottlenecks in
01:28Iran's future ability to create nuclear weapons.
01:31What we saw at Arcticon is also similar. Arcticon was used to convert natural uranium into yellow cake. And yellow
01:39cake is what's converted into uranium hexafluoride, which is ultimately enriched to higher and higher levels and possibly weapon-grade
01:47levels.
01:47So we're seeing Israel eliminate certain stages and steps that are vital for Iran to be able to continue its
01:56enrichment program and wider nuclear program.
02:00Are there any key red lines the international community is watching when it comes to this?
02:08Necessarily, it would be the enrichment up to 90%. That has been stated to be a massive red line that
02:15if Iran touches that in the past, obviously, many past presidents have stated that that would trigger strikes.
02:23But the key here is that Iran hasn't reached that yet. But what Iran has been doing, they've been accumulating
02:30very large quantities of 60% highly rich uranium over the last several years.
02:36They're the only country in the world that does that, that doesn't have a nuclear weapon. There's no civilian application
02:43for that type of enrichment. So there's no justification whatsoever.
02:48Spencer, can the U.S. and Israel destroy Iran's nuclear facilities without endangering bystanders through the release of radioactive material?
02:59Yeah, certainly. You wouldn't want to target something like a Bushir-style nuclear reactor. That would have very large consequences.
03:07You wouldn't want to hit the actual reactor itself.
03:09But the other facilities, such as Fordow, Natanz, Esfahan, et cetera, those are relatively isolated facilities. They're a good distance
03:20away from populations.
03:21And the actual risk of dispersion on a wide level is relatively low. It would be very isolated to the
03:29facilities themselves.
03:30Do the do the attacks in recent days on these facilities, do they call into question the official U.S.
03:37assessment or of the damage assessment of the June 2025 strikes?
03:43Because we thought I think a lot of folks thought, OK, well, based on the rhetoric and what we heard
03:47from the president at the time, the nuclear program in Iran was set back quite a bit.
03:51Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we had some issues with that initial assessment.
03:57I think you're referring to the assessment that said it was only set back a few months.
04:01We had some issues with that. Our analysis stated that the program was severely set back.
04:07The June 2025 war effectively destroyed Iranians enrichment program.
04:12And enrichment is a bottleneck in the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
04:16If you cannot get to 90 percent weapon grade material, it's very hard to build any sort of usable nuclear
04:24weapon.
04:24Sixty percent highly rich uranium technically, theoretically can be used to build a nuclear weapon, but it's not practical.
04:32It's very hard to deliver. It'd be a very large device.
04:35But what Iran has had plans to do during its Ahmaud plan and that was ended in 2003 explicitly and
04:43continued in a more covert form was to build missile deliverable miniaturized warheads that would fit on a Shahab 3
04:52ballistic missile.
04:53And so that's a very different thing.
04:56Our assessment was that their program was severely set back and would take years for Iran to recover what they
05:03actually lost.
05:03But that doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have options.
05:07So after the war, there's a few outstanding elements that were left over.
05:11For example, obviously, everyone's talking about the highly rich uranium.
05:15Half of it, the 220 kilograms of the 60 percent is is likely in the tunnel complex at Esfahan.
05:20There's a lot of talk and chatter about that right now.
05:23Iran also produced a number of advanced centrifuges that they built, but likely never deployed.
05:30So there's questions about where is that?
05:32And then the wider state of, you know, what's the what's the actual accounting of all this?
05:36You know, the IEA has not been allowed to conduct inspections on the ground.
05:40So there's significant questions here and it leaves Iran options.
05:43Yeah.
05:44In the future.
05:44And the future.
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