Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. I'm Stephen Carroll and
Speaker 1: this is Here's Why, where we take one new story
Speaker 1: and explain it in just a few minutes with our
Speaker 1: experts here at Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: Our objective was the destruction of Arrange nuclear and richimid
Speaker 2: capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by
Speaker 2: the world's number one stage sponsor of terror. Tonight, I
Speaker 2: can report to the world that the strikes were a
Speaker 2: spectacular military success.
Speaker 1: It was an unprecedented series of strikes against Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Speaker 1: The United States targeted facilities at four dough, Natanz and
Speaker 1: Isfahan in a thirty seven hour operation that included one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five aircraft, submarine launched Tomahawk missiles, and
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand kilogram bombs. While the effectiveness of those strikes
Speaker 1: as still being assessed, they've compounded another problem. The UN's
Speaker 1: nuclear inspectors don't know where Iran's highly enriched uranium is now.
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure. At a time of war, all
Speaker 3: nuclear sites are closed, so our inspectors who are still
Speaker 3: i must say still in Iran, although they are in
Speaker 3: a protected place. As you can imagine, no inspection, normal
Speaker 3: activity can take place.
Speaker 1: That's the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Raphael
Speaker 1: Mariano Grossi. So here's why Iran's unaccounted for uranium worries experts.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Turne, who covers nuclear diplomacy for Bloomberg, joins me.
Speaker 1: Now for more, Jonathan, First of all, how much uranium
Speaker 1: does Iran have and how dangerous is it?
Speaker 4: Uran has various stockpiles. The most concerning is the four
Speaker 4: hundred and nine kilograms of highly enriched uranium. That material
Speaker 4: is equivalent to the amount needed to make about ten
Speaker 4: nuclear weapons if it was further enriched to ninety percent.
Speaker 4: That material was last seen a few days before Israel's
Speaker 4: bombing commenced on June thirteenth. It was stored in underground
Speaker 4: tunnels at Isfahan complex. However, Rafael Mariano Grussi, the IEA
Speaker 4: Director General, told us on June eighteenth that his inspectors
Speaker 4: had lost track of that material. They were no longer
Speaker 4: to verify its location. The concerns compounded because even before
Speaker 4: the bombing began, Iranian diplomats had told the IAEA that
Speaker 4: if Israel and he did attack, they would move that
Speaker 4: material to an undeclared location. So at this point we
Speaker 4: don't have any visibility on the inventory of nuclear material
Speaker 4: that was existing at the site before. But we're looking
Speaker 4: at about ten days now of that material being out
Speaker 4: of contact with international verification measures.
Speaker 1: Why is it that we don't know more about where
Speaker 1: it is?
Speaker 4: Well before the bombing began, International Aconomic Energy Agency monitors
Speaker 4: were in Iran every day. The IAEA has two hundred
Speaker 4: and seventy four monitors that are going in and out
Speaker 4: of Iran constantly, So all of that material was under
Speaker 4: what's called safeguards. They're under seal of the IAEA. The
Speaker 4: International community and inspectors were going in and out of
Speaker 4: those facilities inspecting an average at one point four a
Speaker 4: day last year once the bombing began, for obvious reasons,
Speaker 4: because you know, the IAEA is not going to be
Speaker 4: entering onto a site under active attack. You know, once
Speaker 4: the attacks began, you eliminated the ability to verify the
Speaker 4: location of that material. Compounding that problem is that Iran
Speaker 4: had informed the IAEA that if Israel did begin to attack,
Speaker 4: it would remove that material to an undisclosed location, and
Speaker 4: as of yesterday, the Iranians still had not told the
Speaker 4: IAEA where they had put it, and you know, just
Speaker 4: to go a step further, Iranians are also making a
Speaker 4: move to restrict IAEA movements and country going forward. They're
Speaker 4: talking about leaving the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, which is
Speaker 4: the bedrock legal arrangement that imposes IAEA inspections in Iran.
Speaker 4: If Iran bars IAEA or leaves the treaty, then we
Speaker 4: face the potential of losing sight of that four hundred
Speaker 4: and kilograms of highly iriched material that could be quickly
Speaker 4: turned into bomb material for a long time, and that
Speaker 4: questions the metrics of success for the attacks. So while
Speaker 4: there's no doubt that there was a grave damage dealt
Speaker 4: to the above ground facilities, perhaps some of the underground
Speaker 4: in Richmond's facilities, the attacks did not take account of
Speaker 4: the existing inventory of Iran's nuclear material.
Speaker 1: I want to come box the framework in a moment
Speaker 1: that underpins all of this that you mentioned, But how
Speaker 1: far could this uranium have been moved? In theory? How
Speaker 1: easily transport able is.
Speaker 4: This There's a vast body of scientific literature about the
Speaker 4: amount of material that be packed to into a canister
Speaker 4: when it's at that enrichment level because there are safety
Speaker 4: concerns about criticality incidents. Basically, that material is limited to
Speaker 4: a canister about the side of a scuba tank that
Speaker 4: can carry about twenty five kilograms of this highly enriched uranium.
Speaker 4: That means, for all practical purposes, an individual or a
Speaker 4: small vehicle, could you know, carry that out and spirit
Speaker 4: it away to an undisclosed location. The handling requirements of
Speaker 4: enriched uranium are not that complicated. It's only after the
Speaker 4: fuel has been irradiated instead of a reactor or in
Speaker 4: a bomb, that you know you're facing a real radiological risk.
Speaker 4: So this is not a complicated task to bring those
Speaker 4: canisters out and put them into a place that has
Speaker 4: not been declared.
Speaker 1: Let's return to the monitoring that was possible before this
Speaker 1: war erupted. How effective was that system thought to have
Speaker 1: been beforehand.
Speaker 4: There's a very dispute about the declared nuclear material in Iran.
Speaker 4: The IAEA has been keeping track to gram levels of
Speaker 4: this vast volume of enriched material that Iran has and
Speaker 4: less I forget it's not just the four hundred nine
Speaker 4: kilograms of highly enriched uranium. They also have thousands of
Speaker 4: kilograms of lower enriched uranium, So that was never the dispute.
Speaker 4: What was the dispute, and the reason that Iran on
Speaker 4: June twelfth was found in non compliance of its safeguards
Speaker 4: agreements was because the agency had detected trace elements of
Speaker 4: uranium at several locations that had not been declared. Now,
Speaker 4: these trace isotopes that were detected were decades of years old,
Speaker 4: I mean they go back to the early two thousands,
Speaker 4: so this was not a smoking gun, so to speak.
Speaker 4: But the standards of verification are so high at the IAEA,
Speaker 4: not just in Iran but in every country that any
Speaker 4: anomaly prompts an investigation, and the Iranians were not cooperating
Speaker 4: in this investigation. The Iranians considered that their cooperation leading
Speaker 4: into the twenty fifteen nuclear agreement that the US left
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen had sufficed that it was under no
Speaker 4: obligation to continue cooperating in these old investigations, and they
Speaker 4: were basically stonewalling the IAEA, which then resulted earlier this
Speaker 4: month in this finding give non compliance. But in terms
Speaker 4: of the actual enriched uranium, we've always had a good
Speaker 4: bead on what that inventory actually looks like.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, then I suppose what does the future of
Speaker 1: the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the structure that underpins all
Speaker 1: of this inspection system, What does the future of that
Speaker 1: framework look like?
Speaker 4: Now, well, that's the good question. And frankly, IAEID Director
Speaker 4: General Raphael Mariano Grossi has been warning about this four
Speaker 4: months because it's been a slow motion train wreck in
Speaker 4: the eyes of people who are paying close attention to this.
Speaker 4: The Iranians have been warning, you know, for at least
Speaker 4: the last year that if this escalates diplomatically, never mind militarily,
Speaker 4: they were prepared to trigger their so called Article ten
Speaker 4: rights under the NPT that would give the IAEA three
Speaker 4: month notice that they were going to be withdrawing from
Speaker 4: that treaty. If they withdraw, that essentially ends IAEA inspections,
Speaker 4: and that is a massively escalatory move in light of
Speaker 4: the conflict we've just witnessed. And let's not forget I mean,
Speaker 4: even in the best case scenario where Iran remains within
Speaker 4: the treaty and inspections continue, it is going to take
Speaker 4: years for the IAEA to re establish a material accountancy baseline.
Speaker 4: There's so much localized chemical and radiological hazards it's going
Speaker 4: to take a while for them even to get back
Speaker 4: on site doing investigations, doing inspections, and once they're in there,
Speaker 4: they're going to have to basically start from point zero
Speaker 4: and rebuilding their data on Iran stockpile. This has caused
Speaker 4: a massively complex challenge to the non proliferation regime.
Speaker 1: Okay and run our nuclear diplomacy reporter. Thank you. For
Speaker 1: more explanations like this from our team of three thousand
Speaker 1: journalists and analysts around the world, go to Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash explainers. I'm Stephen Carroll. This is Here's why.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with more. Thanks for listening.