Iran starts new nuclear game of ‘keep the world guessing'

The Age

7 hours ago

An axiom in the national security world says you cannot bomb a country into giving up its nuclear weapons programs. The attack itself only reinforces a country's determination to build the ultimate deterrent.
Ten days after US President Donald Trump deployed the United States' most powerful bunker busters and missiles from an offshore submarine to take out three of Iran's most critical nuclear sites, that proposition is about to be tested in real life.
On Wednesday, in what may be a glimpse of the future, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a new law suspending all co-operation with United Nations nuclear inspectors. The move violates Iran's obligations as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But after American B-2 Spirit bombers flew roughly 11,250 kilometres non-stop to attack facilities that came to represent Iran's determination to take on the US and Israel, such legal niceties may not seem as important to the Iranians as they once did. And a new chapter in the quarter-century saga of Iran's nuclear aspirations may now be starting, one in which the country's main objective is to keep the world guessing about how swiftly it can recover from a devastating setback – and whether it has the uranium, the hidden technological capability and the will to race for a bomb.
By any short-term measure – the only yardsticks the White House wants to talk about – the mission in the early hours of June 22 was a success. No regional war broke out, as past presidents who considered similar military action always feared. Even sceptics about how long the Iranians were set back – six months? Three years? – acknowledge that the 18,000 centrifuges that were spinning at supersonic speeds, producing near-bomb-grade uranium at a record pace, are now inoperable. Most experts believe they were destroyed.
Trump talks as if this were a one-and-done operation. 'I don't see them being back involved in the nuclear business any more,' Trump said at the NATO summit in The Hague last week, as if Iran's aspirations had disappeared beneath the rubble of Fordow and Natanz.
It may not be that simple. As the United States and Iran stumble toward a post-bombing reality, the White House has avoided any public description of a longer-term strategy. Trump has hinted occasionally about new negotiations that could lead to the lifting of sanctions – but presumably only in return for Iran's commitment to dismantle whatever is left of its nuclear program and let inspectors roam the country verifying that work. That does not seem to match the mood in Iran right now. Not surprisingly, Trump has also said he is 'absolutely' willing to strike again if there are signs that the country is trying to rebuild its capabilities. Israeli officials refer to that approach as 'mowing the lawn'.
But that suggests a constant state of low-level war. And it creates the likelihood that Iran will use the mystery around the fate and whereabouts of its near-bomb-grade uranium, and the prospect of a secret cache of uncompleted new centrifuges, as leverage.