Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, July four, twenty twenty five. Unions are throwing
Speaker 1: their weight around in the public servants and the government
Speaker 1: seems to approve. The Albanese government has put the hard
Speaker 1: word on agency chiefs to meet regularly with union bosses
Speaker 1: through a powerful new committee. A man charged with child
Speaker 1: sex offenses in Melbourne has been revealed as the president
Speaker 1: of an amateur radio club that worked with local Scouts.
Speaker 1: It's believed Michael Simon Wilson was connected to alleged pedophile
Speaker 1: childcare worker Joshua Phillips, who was this week charged with
Speaker 1: dozens of offenses. Those stories alive right now at the
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. What's really going on in Iran?
Speaker 1: Does it have a viable nuclear program? How deeply involved
Speaker 1: at China and Russia in helping their Today Foreign Editor
Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan on the truth about the most secretive regime
Speaker 1: on Earth. It took a matter of minutes, but we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about it for years. The June twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two raid by the United States military on Iran's nuclear
Speaker 1: facilities for dou Natanz and Isfahan was supposed to leave
Speaker 1: nothing but rubble. It's been obliterated, totally obliterated. But then
Speaker 1: US defense spies said not so much.
Speaker 2: A preliminary Pentagon report indicates the damage was limited, seeing
Speaker 2: Iran's nuclear program was only set back a few months.
Speaker 1: And then their boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down
Speaker 1: on the rubble. You better get a big shovel and
Speaker 1: go really deep because Iran's nuclear program is obliterated. And
Speaker 1: now the CIA says that's right.
Speaker 2: CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a statement saying several key
Speaker 2: Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be
Speaker 2: rebuilt over the course of years.
Speaker 1: It's confusing, and when things are confusing, we bring in
Speaker 1: the foreign editor Greg Sheridan to make it all clear.
Speaker 2: The truth is clear. Nobody knows. That's a very unsatisfactory answer.
Speaker 2: The truth is nobody knows the true extent of the
Speaker 2: damage at Fourdah, not even the Iranians, because nobody has
Speaker 2: been down there to dig through the rubble. Were any
Speaker 2: of the facilities left intact inside Fourdoh? What happened to
Speaker 2: the four hundred kilograms of enriched uranium enriched nearly to
Speaker 2: weapons grade, which the Uranians have as a stockpile, which
Speaker 2: they had stored in Fourdo because they thought it was
Speaker 2: safer there. Did they get it out? Has it been
Speaker 2: forever encased in a sort of landslide caused by this
Speaker 2: bunker bomb? The Americans put twelve bunker busters onto four Todoh,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them down a ventilation shaft. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have liked to be at the bottom of that myself.
Speaker 2: It's very clear they've done big, big damage. But I'm
Speaker 2: sure Trump was exaggerating when he says they totally obliterated
Speaker 2: the facilities. But more than exaggeration, the truth is we
Speaker 2: just don't know.
Speaker 1: Before those strikes happened, there was talk that if they
Speaker 1: were dropped on a place like Fourdo, essentially a nuclear
Speaker 1: facility inside a mountain, that they would destroy the mountain.
Speaker 1: In fact, what we saw from surveillance photographs afterwards were
Speaker 1: quite neat holes in the mountain, and all that damage
Speaker 1: is underground. When you saw those images, Greg, were you
Speaker 1: surprised that the mountain at photo for example, had not
Speaker 1: been destroyed.
Speaker 2: No, But I'm not claiming to have great technical expertise
Speaker 2: on what happens to a mountain when you put a
Speaker 2: bunker buster inside it. These bombs are quite unique, and
Speaker 2: if they weren't so distractive, they'd be quite beautiful. They
Speaker 2: weigh thirty thousand pounds about fourteen thousand kilograms. I think
Speaker 2: about half that weight is actually explosive, So they are
Speaker 2: the biggest non nuclear bombs in the world. They are
Speaker 2: guided by a version of GPS to a very precise target,
Speaker 2: and then they burrow sixty meters underground before they blow up. Now,
Speaker 2: I guess it's like building the Snowy hydro project or something.
Speaker 2: If you go far enough underground, you won't disturb the
Speaker 2: surface of the mountain that much. But we know that
Speaker 2: uranium in Richmond's cascades are very very delicate machines. In
Speaker 2: the past is rather than the United States have been
Speaker 2: able to wipe them out with computer viruses just to
Speaker 2: make them vibrate in the wrong way, and then they
Speaker 2: sort of have a nervous collapse. They can't deal with
Speaker 2: the vibrations and completely stop functioning. Now, the National Atomic
Speaker 2: Energy Agency thinks that whatever happened, that would be enough
Speaker 2: to destroy those cascades. The question would be really whether
Speaker 2: the Iranians have other cascades somewhere else. There's another mountain,
Speaker 2: Pickaxe Mountain, not far from the Tans, I think, where
Speaker 2: the Iranians are said to be building the secret tunnels
Speaker 2: and so on. I think the truth is the Americans
Speaker 2: in Israelis will keep a very close watch on this,
Speaker 2: and if they think the Iranians are getting close to
Speaker 2: reviving the program, they'll do it again. But there are
Speaker 2: a lot of other fascinating things out of the war.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Israelis completely suppressed Iranian air defense, so
Speaker 2: the Israelis and the Americans had complete freedom of movement
Speaker 2: across the Iranian skies. The level of knowledge that the
Speaker 2: Israelis had about where every nuclear scientist was, every member
Speaker 2: of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. I mean, the one
Speaker 2: telephone call I'd hate to get in Iran would be congratulations,
Speaker 2: you've been promoted to the head of the Islamic Revolutionary
Speaker 2: Guard Corps. I mean, I certainly make sure my affairs
Speaker 2: were in order. If I got that, well, guess what,
Speaker 2: You've been seconded to the nuclear development program. I think
Speaker 2: those would be very unattractive phone calls. The other thing, Claire,
Speaker 2: is it seems there's a very high consensus that the
Speaker 2: so called converter was destroyed. Now, to make a weapon,
Speaker 2: you have to convert highly enriched uranium into metal. But
Speaker 2: on the reporting, the Uranians can't make a converter. They
Speaker 2: were given one or presumably sold it by China quite
Speaker 2: some time ago, So either China or Russia or North
Speaker 2: Korea would have to consciously supply them with another converter. So,
Speaker 2: in a sense, it doesn't matter how many cascades they've
Speaker 2: got and how many tons of enriched uranium. If they
Speaker 2: want to make an actual nuclear warhead, they'll need a
Speaker 2: converter again, as well as a fully functioning program. Well,
Speaker 2: they might get one next week from China, or China
Speaker 2: might decide that it doesn't want to have an Islamic
Speaker 2: bomb just nearby anyway after all, and they may never
Speaker 2: get one.
Speaker 1: Iran's President Massud Pozeshkian has now signed a law saying
Speaker 1: that Iran won't cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Speaker 1: Does that mean anything in practice? Greg Or were they
Speaker 1: not cooperating in the first.
Speaker 2: Place, Well, they were partly cooperating and they are partly
Speaker 2: not cooperating, So they did allow IAEA inspectors in to
Speaker 2: some extent, so that meant you could keep some surveillance
Speaker 2: on some of their facilities. A rag nation like Iran
Speaker 2: can still do things in secret at other facilities, but
Speaker 2: it has to be a bit careful of what it's
Speaker 2: doing under the eye of the IAEA. It's completely inconceivable
Speaker 2: that while they are not cooperating with the IAEA, they
Speaker 2: get any real relief from sanctions. I mean, people say,
Speaker 2: if he Ran really wanted a nuclear weapon, it would
Speaker 2: have had one by now. But that ignores two or
Speaker 2: three fundamental things. First of all, the Americans of the
Speaker 2: Israelis constantly interfered with the Iranian program. The Israelis engaged
Speaker 2: in targeted assassinations, physical sabotage, and cyber sabotage that was very,
Speaker 2: very effective. And Secondly, the Iranians lacked money and resources
Speaker 2: because they were subject to such crippling sanctions and pulling
Speaker 2: out of the International Atomic Energy Agency so definitively guarantees
Speaker 2: that they'll be subject to those sanctions. And it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter who succeeds Donald Trump, it could be Alexandra or
Speaker 2: Caazio Cortez won't she won't lift the sanctions if they're
Speaker 2: not cooperating with the IAEA.
Speaker 1: Coming up? Is there a chance Iran's regime could really fall?
Speaker 1: One of my favorite TV shows, Greg, I think I've
Speaker 1: tried to get you to watch it in the past.
Speaker 1: I just want to talk to you about it, so
Speaker 1: you are going to have to watch it as your homework.
Speaker 1: It's called Tehran. It's on Apple TV Plus, and it's
Speaker 1: about a smoking hot Israeli female Mossad spy who's sent
Speaker 1: to Iran to penetrate the country and try to destroy
Speaker 1: all their ambitions. Her cover is blown as as soon
Speaker 1: as she gets in the country, and she's being hunted
Speaker 1: by the head of the Revolutionary Guard. What emerges over
Speaker 1: the course of the show is that even though senior
Speaker 1: officials in the Iranian government are uncomfortable with the regime,
Speaker 1: don't like the repression of women, they are deeply patriotic
Speaker 1: and they don't want Iran to suffer or to collapse.
Speaker 1: Is that part of the problem here for Israel that
Speaker 1: we can talk about regime change in Iran, but even
Speaker 1: Iranians who don't like the government are very very patriotic.
Speaker 2: Well clear, that's true in a way, but I mean
Speaker 2: everyone is patriotic. I mean, Greenland is a patriotic you know,
Speaker 2: most Landers are patrion everybody's patriotic. I think all the
Speaker 2: talk of regime change, both by the Israelis and the
Speaker 2: Americans was just a bit of bluff, really. I mean
Speaker 2: it's just designed to put a bit of psychological pressure
Speaker 2: on the Iranian government. I mean, if you are seriously
Speaker 2: pursuing regime change, you try to kill the government and
Speaker 2: you back people to replace the government. Well, the Israelis
Speaker 2: were very meticulous in not targeting the civilian leadership of Iran.
Speaker 2: If either of the Americans or the Israelis had been
Speaker 2: pursuing regime change, they would have run a different kind
Speaker 2: of operation, and they would have tried to identify the
Speaker 2: Iranians who they would have liked to take power. Now,
Speaker 2: the Iranian society is very complex and very diverse, but
Speaker 2: everything we can know leads us to believe that they
Speaker 2: hate the regime. Ninety million people, very ancient society, ethnically,
Speaker 2: quite diverse. They're not a Persians, they're certainly not all share.
Speaker 2: You get regime change in a society like that if
Speaker 2: there's a popular uprising and the security forces won't shoot
Speaker 2: their own people. Where there have been a lot of
Speaker 2: popular uprisings in Iran over the last twenty years, but
Speaker 2: the security forces have always been quite happy to arrest,
Speaker 2: beat to death and shoot the citizens engaging in the demonstrations.
Speaker 2: But another way you get regime change is if there's
Speaker 2: a division within the elite leadership. Now some of the
Speaker 2: elite leadership will be saying, what did we get out
Speaker 2: of these hundreds of billions of dollars that we invested
Speaker 2: in Russian defense systems, missile capabilities, nuclear weapons programs. The
Speaker 2: Great Satan and the Little Satan between them have just
Speaker 2: wiped it all out. Now, none of that guarantees you're
Speaker 2: going to get change in Iran, And you could get
Speaker 2: change that is worse. You could get a worse government,
Speaker 2: you know, a government which became needless. But I think
Speaker 2: this war will have exacerbated the divisions within Iran. There
Speaker 2: is a little bit of a rally around the flag effect,
Speaker 2: but there's no evidence of any affection for this government.
Speaker 2: This is a This is a widely despised government by
Speaker 2: a pretty lictric population.
Speaker 1: Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor. You can read
Speaker 1: all the latest from the Middle East, as well as
Speaker 1: all the nation's best news, sport and politics anytime at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com. Dou Yah