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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

America’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend mark a terrifying turning point.

Donald Trump has taken the US into direct conflict with Iran – and risked what the UN secretary general is calling a “rathole of retaliation”.

In an address at the Pentagon, the US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth claimed Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated – but questions remain about the extent of the damage – and whether the attack will only strengthen Iran’s resolve to rebuild.

Today, author of The Permanent Crisis: Iran’s Nuclear Trajectory – and defence editor at The Economist – Shashank Joshi – on what Iran will do next – and what Donald Trump calling for regime change says about how far we are from peace.

It’s Tuesday, June 24.

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Audio excerpt – Pete Hegseth:

“Last night on President Trump's orders, U.S. Central Command conducted a precision strike in the middle of the night against three nuclear facilities in Iran, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, in order to destroy or severely degrade Iran's nuclear programme.”

RUBY:

Shashank, thanks for speaking with me. The United States secretary for defence Pete Hegseth said in a press conference at the Pentagon “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated”...

Audio excerpt – Pete Hegseth:

“Thanks to President Trump's bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.”

RUBY:

…Is that true?

SHASHANK:

We don't know. We know that America has dropped some of the very biggest bombs in its arsenal on this mountainside in Fordow. And we can have confidence that that's probably caused damage to any of the centrifuge machines inside the facility, which are typically very, very sensitive to any kind of disruption or vibration. And obviously, dropping a 30,000 bomb on a mountain causes more than a little bit of vibration. We also know that Iran. Has been conversing uranium into different forms in a way that you might need for a weapon down the line. But, and there's a very big but, we don't know exactly how much damage has been done to Fordow. Even the Iranians may not be aware of it because they may not able to enter the facility safely given all the rubble, given all the contamination that may be inside. We don't as well. Where exactly Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium is. That is uranium enriched to about 60%, which is a very, very short distance from weapons grade. It used to be stored at Esfahan, which where it was inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA no longer has any visibility into that stockpile. Iran said it has moved some of these stocks away from facilities that are known to the U.S and others. And, in the days prior to these US strikes, satellite images also showed trucks and vehicles at some of these sites. So that's the problem. We do not know if Iran stockpile of uranium has been destroyed. And if it hasn't, of course, that is a problem that could be used as the basis for an effort towards a bomb in other secret clandestine sites.

RUBY:

The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the war risks sinking into a “rathole of retaliation”.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“From the outset of the crisis… we now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation.”

RUBY:

Iran has promised “everlasting consequences” to the series of attacks against it – so what type of retaliation do you anticipate?

SHASHANK:

We know that Iran, for example, could attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. And Hormuze is a very important waterway in the Persian Gulf. It's effectively the kind of point at which the, you know sort of lots of key oil traffic flows. It's the only passage from the Persian gulf to the open sea. And if Iran were to, you. Place mines, for example, that could cause real disruption to the energy market. However // I think it's pretty important that we separate Iran's rhetoric from its real situation, which is that it's deeply wounded, it has lost very senior commanders, it's lost a great number of its missile launchers, perhaps two-thirds of them, according to some Israeli accounts, and the regime is afraid. It's afraid that the regime itself may be a target of strikes in the coming days. And so they will be seeking to save face, to sort of strike back in a way that preserves their honour without provoking a huge retaliation of the kind that Donald Trump has threatened. And I would cast your mind back to 2020 when America killed Qasem Soleimani, who was a very senior Iranian general, and Iran responded by conducting missile strikes against a US base in Iraq, But it was a very calibrated retaliation. They effectively gave America notice that it would happen. They showed them where the missiles were landing. And it was a way of showing that they had done something very robust and strong without actually trying to kill very large numbers of Americans. And I think that that is along the lines of what you could see in the coming days if Iran is trying to keep tensions within limits.

RUBY:

And Donald Trump made this decision to attack Iran after saying that he would be considering whether or not to do it within the next two weeks. So talk to me about what was behind that statement and the calculations that were made within his administration to misdirect the public while they were ultimately obviously planning this attack.

SHASHANK:

Well, had Iran turned up to those diplomatic talks with France and Germany and Geneva over the weekend and said, actually, we're willing to completely dismantle our nuclear programme and give up, perhaps Donald Trump would have cancelled these strikes, although that's difficult to say. It does look as though he was using both diplomacy and his own statements about making a decision within two weeks as a smoke screen to deceive Iran while preparations were being made for these strikes. And the reason preparations have to be made is because these, you know, the journey to Iran for the B-2 stealth bomber that is the only plane that can carry these huge bombs, it is a 37 hour round trip. It's enormous. And you need refuelling planes along the way to keep these bombers in the air. And you also need intelligence to be gathered about exactly what you're hitting. You know, who's in the area, what's the weather like, because that affects the movement of these gravity bombs dropped from these planes. So he would have been using that time to prepare this attack, as well as, I think, to prepare US military facilities in the areas to cope with any subsequent retaliation, for example, evacuating families from military bases in places like Bahrain and Qatar. So I suspect the deception was largely aimed at buying time to prepare. And at making American facilities more secure. And then finally, there was that last little faint of sending some B2s effectively the wrong way. A couple of decoy B2 taking off and heading west spotted over the Pacific to make it look as though they were heading in a completely different direction.

RUBY:

Shashank, in announcing the attacks, Pete Hegseth, he said that Donald Trump, quote, seeks peace. So in your view, does this decision by the US to strike Iran bring that outcome any closer?

SHASHANK:

Think in this narrow sense that it may accelerate the Israeli campaign because the Israeli campaign has largely been about destroying Iran's nuclear programme, although there have been some other interests like destabilising the Iranian state. And with that in mind, because Fordow is now probably neutralised to some large degree and Iran's Nuclear Programme has been weakened very substantially, it makes it easier for Israel to stop the conflict. However, we don't know the full scope of Iran's retaliation. And if that retaliation is more expansive than I have suggested, for example, if they launch a bunch of missiles at a US base in the Middle East in ways that kill Marines and kill soldiers or kill airmen, that could quite easily drag America straight back in to go hit political targets in Tehran. We don't now. And so whether or not this move brings peace closer, I think is really dependent on. The Iranian retaliation as much as anything else.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break – what America’s strike on Iran says about its strategy in the Middle East.

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RUBY:

Shashank – United States has adopted Israel's frame being that these attacks were necessary to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear weapon. Has there been any intelligence or evidence presented yet to back that up?

SHASHANK:

We haven't seen clear evidence in public. We've seen claims by Israel in public on the very first day of the war that Iran was accelerating its progress towards what we call weaponization, that is elements of the bomb making process. In particular, that it was quite publicly racking up huge quantities of highly enriched uranium, but it was also working, they say, on the neutron initiators that you need to trigger a bomb as well as the plastic explosives that go around it. And the uranium core itself, the round, a spherical bit of fissile material that goes at the very heart of a bomb. But we haven't seen detailed documentation or intelligence to support that. My colleagues at The Economist, we have been told that Iran was taking some steps, for example, about to initiate a meeting of its missile forces in ways that would help them mate a potential warhead to a missile down the line. But by and large Western officials appear to be much more sceptical of some of these claims, and whilst they all agree Iran was doing concerning things with weapons-related technology, that it had not decided to finally manufacture a bomb, and I can see no sign from outside countries that they agree Iran was racing its way towards that outcome at all.

RUBY:

What does this strike on Iran say to you about America's plans more broadly in the Middle East, given that such a large part of Trump's base is anti-interventionist and getting involved in this way is in conflict with how he campaigned?

SHASHANK:

I think it shows you the problem that so many administrations have had, which is, how do you keep away from the quagmire of the Middle East when you are trying desperately to try to effectively pivot to Asia and focus on the challenge posed by China? And it's a problem that confronted Barack Obama and his pivot to Asian 2014. He was dragged in to supporting the European military campaign in Libya. It's a programme that bedevilled Trump in his first term. He had, you know, he bombed Syria. He nearly bombed Iran. It's a problem that afflicted a Joe Biden who ended up having to fire at the Houthis and was pulled into the war in the Middle East as well after October 7th. And I think that there will be many in the Pentagon saying we did this, we did it once, but what's imperative now is that we do not let this become an open-ended campaign of the kind that we have criticised so often in the past. And that will be fine, but of course the thing to remember as we've discussed is that the enemy gets a vote and Iran will have a be a determinant in the question as to whether how bad this could eventually get and how far America may against its will have to be pulled back in.

RUBY:

What do you think the longer term US strategy is?

SHASHANK:

I think the longer term US strategy is still to try to limit its involvement in the Middle East to avoid getting sucked into a very high degree. I think that they realise they, you know, the military balance in the Pacific against China has been eroding. They must focus on this, on sort of building up forces there. And you know just look at the munitions you're spending. They fired scores of Tomahawk land attack missiles yesterday, cruise missiles. These are weapons that the Indo-Pacific Command in the Pentagon believes would be vital for any conflict with China. And they just chewed through more of them, having chewed though many others in the campaign against the Houthis earlier this year. So there will be many military officers focused on the Pacific, who will have their head in their hands saying, this is terrible. So I think in the longer run, this administration is still going to try its best to be disciplined if it can and to try to avoid committing itself in a part of the world in a region. That it feels has been effectively a graveyard for American resources and lives for the last 25 years.

RUBY:

Mm-hmm. Donald Trump is now talking very directly about regime change saying on truth social I'll quote it's not politically correct to use the term regime change But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be regime change? So how I mean how likely is that outcome?

SHASHANK:

I think it's still unlikely. I think that he is, you know, Donald Trump likes campaigns that are successful and strong and he didn't want this war in the first place, but once Israel showed that it was succeeding, that appealed to him and it pulled him in. Israel is now flirting with the idea of regime change and that may also be influencing Mr. Trump. But I think that his advisors will be much more sceptical of any kind of effort at political change. Than they will at what was seen as a one-off strike against Fordow and other nuclear sites. I think in a way, the way we should think about this is that Trump is holding out this political threat as a way of trying to influence the current debate inside Iran and inside its leadership over how to retaliate and how severely to do so. And what it says is if you kill Americans and you retaliate in a big way, I'm willing to come back and topple your government. But if you don't do that, I'm willing to stay out of this. Um, that I think is more likely to be the signal that he's sending. Although with Donald Trump, of course, you know, you never quite know what's happening in his head.

RUBY:

Shashank, thank you so much for your time.

SHASHANK:

You're very welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the government is continuing to work with Australians stranded in Iran and Israel.

Senator Wong says 13-hundred Australians in Israel and 3-thousand in Iran have registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs as wanting to leave; however, evacuation attempts in Iran are particularly complicated.

The Department of Foreign Affairs says Australia has deployed support at the Azerbaijani border to help those able to make it there.

And

The federal government is being urged by the Greens to disclose whether the satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory was used in the US strikes against Iran.

Greens defence spokesperson David Shoebridge says Australia should take immediate steps to distance itself from the US over the strikes - describing the development as a dangerous escalation.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, thanks for listening.

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