From Cabinet secretary to doomsday president: What being a designated survivor is like
They start the day often as low-profile Cabinet secretaries. They end it that way, too, God willing.
But, when the rest of the government is gathered together for a big event, like President Donald Trump 's joint congressional address Tuesday night, a designated survivor is kept away to ensure someone in the line of presidential succession stays alive.
Picking a failsafe in case of a cataclysmic event that wipes out everyone else dates back to the Cold War. It's been dramatized in novels and an ABC series starring Kiefer Sutherland that aired from 2016 to 2019.
Being the actual designated survivor brings extra adrenaline jolts and humbling thoughts about being unwittingly catapulted into the presidency and unthinkable tragedy — though the minute-to-minute details usually don't feature the high drama of fictional portrayals, those who have filled the role say.
'It focuses your mind. It also enhances your prayer that it doesn't happen to you,' James Nicholson, who was President George W. Bush's veterans affairs secretary and designated survivor during the 2006 State of the Union, said of possibly becoming president after a cataclysmic event.
Trump's White House hasn't said who will be the designated survivor choice Tuesday. Historian and journalist Garrett M. Graff said the concept of designated survivor has long captivated people because it combines the public's inherent fascination with danger and the romance of an 'everyman' being thrust into the presidency.
'The idea of, you're just a random Cabinet official, and then something terrible happens and, all of a sudden, you're president of the United States," said Graff, author of 'Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself — While the Rest of Us Die.'
Until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, designated survivors had more control over where they went outside Washington. President Bill Clinton 's energy secretary, the late Bill Richardson, was picked in 2000 and simply moved up a planned weekend trip with his wife to Oxford, Maryland, a waterfront town about 80 miles away, so he'd be there during the State of the Union.
When Dan Glickman, Clinton's agriculture secretary, was tapped during the 1997 State of the Union, his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, was too far away, so he chose New York, where his daughter lived.
'I thought it was kind of exciting. But I wasn't hyped up from a dangerous perspective,' Glickman said. 'I don't even think anybody told me to be careful.'
Alberto Gonzales, Bush's attorney general, was the designated survivor during the 2007 State of the Union. He said White House chief of staff Josh Bolten called a few days before and gave a couple of options for where he could hunker down.
Gonzales chose to be in flight, and he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to find 'members of every major department and agency' there to ride with him. They carried thick binders stuffed with memos and protocol instructions, just in case.
He said there were a series of briefings that may have stretched right into Bush's speech, which he watched from the air.
'It was during that time that it sort of suddenly hit me, if something happened in the Capitol and everyone's killed, that I'd be president,' Gonzales said. "It's sort of sobering. And you wonder, would I be up to governing a wounded nation?'
In 'Raven Rock,' Graff details how the designated survivor concept was formalized by the Carter and Reagan administrations amid fears that Soviet subs just off the Atlantic Coast could fire nuclear missiles and wipe out Washington with barely 10 minutes' warning.
Beginning in April 1980, the White House Military Office tasked the Federal Emergency Management Agency with ensuring succession. An aide was directed to recommend to the president who should skip events when all possible successors were together outside the White House.
Officials still prepare for a massive attack or disaster. The military helicopter that collided with a regional jet outside Reagan National Airport in January was on a continuity of government mission — training to keep the federal government functioning in case of catastrophe.
The first time that a Cabinet member being kept away from a presidential speech to Congress was publicly divulged was President Ronald Reagan's Education Secretary Terrel Bell in 1981. But Bell wasn't identified until afterward.
Today, TV images from the House chamber allow political junkies to spot the missing Cabinet member within minutes.
Nicholson said Bush's then-chief of staff, Andy Card, had asked him a few weeks before the State of the Union to take on the role. He was a natural fit given that his agency played an important role in continuity of government exercises due to its numerous hospitals and clinics nationwide.
Nicholson flew by helicopter to a destination only divulged once he was in the air, and later sat in a command center, where he underwent briefings before watching Bush's speech.
He was served a 'wonderful' dinner, prepared onsite by personnel from the White House mess, though he can't recall if it was T-bone steak or prime rib or something similar. 'It made you think that, at least, if this awful thing happened, you'd be well fed," he said.
'The enormity of that job. You think about, remote as it is, this is something you might have to do,' he said of becoming president. Nicholson's wife was attending the State of the Union, meaning that if something happened, she could be among the victims, which only added to the pressure.
When it was over, Nicholson wasn't asked to fill in his predecessor in the role, Gonzales, or future designated survivors.
'We don't have a club,' he laughed. "We should.'
Glickman recalls boarding an Air Force G-3 from Andrews along with Secret Service agents, a military official and a series of advisers not on his usual staff. A three-car motorcade later carried him from LaGuardia Airport to his daughter's apartment near Union Square in Manhattan.
She wanted to invite others to watch the speech with them, but Glickman nixed that. 'This was not a party," he said.
It wasn't all serious, though. Glickman said he was told he didn't need to dress up, so he didn't wear a suit. Instructions not to study up spared him from reading briefing books or memorizing security protocols.
After the speech, the Secret Service asked if Glickman wanted a ride to the airport. He declined, saying he planned to have dinner with his daughter. It was sleeting when the motorcade left without him, making taxis scarce and the sudden return to real life especially abrupt.
'I was the most powerful man on the face of the earth, theoretically," Glickman remembered joking to his daughter. "And then I can't even get a cab.'
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Telegraph
37 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Did Trump's strike pay off? New images show Iran's nuclear ambitions in ruins
US strikes on Iran may have set the country's nuclear programme back by several years, according to preliminary expert analysis. Donald Trump's claims that Iran's nuclear sites had been 'completely and totally obliterated' were likely to be an overstatement, serving and former US military officials said – but it is probable that all three facilities targeted suffered extensive damage. Under best-case assessments, Iran's capacity to enrich uranium has been severely degraded, if not destroyed. However, the country's existing stockpiles of uranium enriched to near weapons grade – enough to fuel 10 nuclear bombs – is thought to have survived. Understanding the extent to which the US has damaged Iran's nuclear programme is a vital in determining whether the strikes were a one-off or merely the opening salvo of a wider conflict US B-2 stealth bombers and cruise missiles struck Iran's three most important nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. If the strikes succeeded in destroying centrifuge halls at the facilities, they would prevent Iran from further enriching its uranium stockpiles to a purity of 90 per cent – something it has not done so far, according to UN inspectors. Satellite images of convoys leaving all three sites in recent days support Iran's claims that it moved its 400-kg stockpile – much of it previously held at Isfahan – to a secret underground location shortly before the strikes. Even if that were the case, however, the damage inflicted elsewhere would still make it difficult to turn the uranium into a bomb. Even if Iran had retained its fissile material, it would be 'like having fuel without a car,' said Ronen Solomon, an Israeli intelligence analyst. 'They have the uranium – but they can't do a lot with it, unless they have built something we don't know about on a small scale.' That is not beyond the realm of possibility. Iran succeeded in keeping its Fordow facility a secret for seven years before it was dramatically exposed, by Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy – then the leaders of the US, UK and France – at a joint press conference in 2009, following a joint intelligence operation. Fordow Of the three sites attacked, Fordow was by far the most important. The last-known site developed by the Iranians was deliberately designed to withstand aerial attack. An 'engineering marvel', in the words of one Western official, its main centrifuge halls lie buried up to half a mile inside a mountain. Not only does a layer of solid rock act as a natural shield impervious to most bombs, but additional artificial layers of reinforcement are also believed to have been added. The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bomb – 12 of which the US dropped on Fordow – is capable of penetrating 60 metres of standard concrete before exploding. But Iran is believed to have reinforced the centrifuge halls at Fordow with ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC), which can withstand six times the amount of pressure of normal concrete – up to 30,000-lb per square inch. If Iran used the best quality UHPC, Fordow would have been significantly harder to destroy. Given that the site is underground, it remains difficult to assess the scale of the damage yet, with both Iranian and US officials saying they are still conducting evaluations. Natanz Above-ground facilities at Natanz, Iran's largest enrichment site, had already been damaged by extensive Israeli strikes, as shown by satellite imagery. The destruction of the site's electric substation may have knocked out power, potentially damaging centrifuges by causing them to spin out of control, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog. Natanz also housed an underground centrifuge hall thought to have been the target of two US bunker-busters. The site was additionally struck by cruise missiles fired by a US submarine in the Arabian Sea. Isfahan Much of Iran's mostly highly enriched uranium is thought to have been stored at the nuclear research and production centre near the city of Isfahan, the ancient capital of Safavid Persia. International inspectors verified the fuel was there a fortnight ago, but satellite imagery suggests Iran may have moved it in recent days. Israel had previously struck laboratories and three other buildings at the facility. The US did not use bunker-busters on Isfahan – which is thought to be mostly above ground – and instead attacked with cruise missiles. The strikes are thought to have damaged six additional buildings, including a fuel rod production facility. Overall assessment A fuller picture of overall damage may emerge in the coming days, with experts urging caution about attaching too much credibility to the US president's more optimistic pronouncements or to Iran's defiant claims that its nuclear capacity remains largely intact. Clionadh Raleigh, head of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a conflict-monitoring group, warned that although the strikes might alter the timeline of Iran's nuclear programme, they would do little to alter its ultimate trajectory. 'The regime's broader power and intentions are likely to remain intact,' said Ms Raleigh. 'Iran's military and intelligence systems are designed and built to survive. The structure is deeply layered and resistant to collapse. Even if key infrastructure is destroyed, the system adapts – and in some cases, becomes more dangerous in the process. 'There's no evidence that the strikes will permanently end Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities. What they may do is shift the timeline.' Others were less cautious. Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official who served in the first Trump administration, told the New York Times that the US strikes will 'likely set back the Iranian nuclear programme two to five years' – an assessment shared by Jason Brodsky of United Against a Nuclear Iran, a US-based pressure group. The setback stems not only from the strikes themselves. Repairing the damage will be far harder following the assassination of more than a dozen nuclear scientists in the past 10 days, Israeli officials said. 'Several of the eliminated scientists had spent decades advancing nuclear weapons, constituting a significant part of the Iranian regime's plans to annihilate the State of Israel,' one official said. 'These scientists had diverse professional expertise and extensive experience.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Like George W Bush, Trump has started a reckless war based on a lie
In May 2003, George W Bush landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to deliver a triumphant speech, declaring that major combat operations in Iraq had ended – six weeks after he had ordered US troops to invade the country. Bush spoke under a now infamous banner on the carrier's bridge that proclaimed, 'Mission Accomplished'. It would turn into a case study of American hubris and one of the most mocked photo-ops in modern history. As Bush made his speech off the coast of San Diego, I was in Baghdad covering the invasion's aftermath as a correspondent for a US newspaper. It was clear then that the war was far from over, and the US was likely to face a grinding insurgency led by former members of the Iraqi security forces. It would also soon become clear that Bush's rationale for invading Iraq was built on a lie: Saddam Hussein's regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and was not intent on developing them. And Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, despite the Bush administration's repeated attempts to connect Hussein's regime to al-Qaida. Today, Donald Trump has dragged the US into another war based on exaggerations and manipulated intelligence: the Israel-Iran conflict, which began on 13 June when Israel launched a surprise attack killing some of Iran's top military officials and nuclear scientists, and bombing dozens of targets across the country. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that Israel had to attack because Tehran was working to weaponize its stockpile of enriched uranium and racing to build a nuclear bomb. 'If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,' Netanyahu said, as the first wave of Israeli bombs fell on Iran. 'It could be a year. It could be within a few months.' Before dawn on Sunday, US warplanes and submarines bombed three major nuclear facilities in Iran. In a speech from the White House, Trump declared the operation a 'spectacular military success' and said the sites had been 'totally obliterated'. Trump added that his goal was to stop 'the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror'. But does Iran pose the immediate threat that Netanyahu and Trump have claimed? US intelligence officials, along with the UN's nuclear watchdog and independent experts, say that while Iran has dramatically increased its supply of uranium enriched to nearly weapons grade, there is no evidence it has taken steps to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, the US director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress that America's intelligence agencies continued 'to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon'. She added that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 'has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003'. Gabbard also noted that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was 'at its highest levels' and 'unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons'. That's largely because, in 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated in 2015 between Tehran and six world powers. Under that agreement, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for relief from international sanctions. A few years after Trump tore up the deal that was signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, Iran began to enrich uranium up to 60% purity – a short step away from the 90% level required for a nuclear device. Still, in a report issued last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog that has monitored Iran's main nuclear enrichment sites for years, said it found no evidence that Tehran was actively developing a weapons program. The agency criticized Iranian officials for failing to provide access to some sites and to cooperate with UN inspectors, especially over Tehran's past secret nuclear weapons program, which is believed to have ended by 2003. Despite these criticisms, the IAEA report said it had 'no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear program'. Recent US intelligence assessments found that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon and was up to three years away from being able to develop an actual warhead and deploy it on a missile. (Under pressure from Trump, who said twice last week that Gabbard's testimony to Congress in March was 'wrong', the intelligence chief changed course on Friday to say that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon 'within weeks to months'.) Of course, there's one state in the Middle East that has an active nuclear weapons program: Israel, which doesn't acknowledge having a nuclear arsenal. But in January, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute identified Israel as one of the world's nine nuclear-armed states, and estimated that it currently has 90 warheads. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Netanyahu continues to insist that Iran was dashing to produce a nuclear weapon. 'The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear – was absolutely clear – that they [the Iranians] were working in a secret plan to weaponize the uranium,' Netanyahu told the Fox News anchor Bret Baier (who hosts one of Trump's favorite news shows) in an interview on 15 June. 'They were marching very quickly. They would achieve a test device and possibly an initial device within months and certainly less than a year.' Netanyahu's statements echo the exaggerated intelligence and sense of fear peddled by the Bush administration ahead of the US invasion of Iraq – and it's exactly the kind of open-ended conflict based on lies that Trump promised voters he would avoid as president. In September 2002, Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in a CNN interview that 'there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly' the Iraqi regime could acquire nuclear weapons. 'But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,' she added in a reference that would be repeated by other US officials, including Bush himself. Not surprisingly, Netanyahu had also lobbied the Bush administration to attack Iraq – and insisted that the Iraqi regime was developing a nuclear bomb. After his first term as Israel's prime minister, Netanyahu testified before Congress as a private citizen in September 2002, warning of the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iraq. 'There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons,' Netanyahu confidently told Congress. He added: 'Once Saddam has nuclear weapons, the terror network will have nuclear weapons.' Netanyahu, who has always had a flair for the extravagant soundbite, also claimed that Hussein no longer needed one large reactor to produce nuclear fuel, but could do so 'in centrifuges the size of washing machines' that could be hidden throughout Iraq. The Israeli leader was not only wrong about Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction, but he also insisted that a US war on Iraq would be a boon for the Middle East and would inspire Iranians to rise up against the Islamic republic. 'If you take out Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,' Netanyahu said. 'I think that people sitting right nextdoor in Iran, young people and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots, is gone.' It's also important to remember that Netanyahu has practically made a career out of warning that Iran is years (or months) away from developing nukes. Over the past 30 years, he regularly issued some variation on this threat – and often wildly overestimated how close Iran was to having a bomb. In 1992, as a member of Israel's Knesset, Netanyahu cautioned that Iran was 'three to five years' away from developing a nuclear weapons capability. In 1996, as prime minister, he addressed a joint session of Congress and urged the US to 'stop the nuclearization of terrorist states'. He added, 'The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.' In February 2009, as leader of the Likud party and a candidate for prime minister, Netanyahu told a congressional delegation visiting Israel that Iran was 'probably only one or two years away' from developing a nuclear weapons capability – attributing the claim to Israeli 'experts' without offering other evidence. The conversation was summarized in a US state department cable released by WikiLeaks. Later in 2009, when he was back in office as premier, another leaked cable revealed that Netanyahu told a separate group of visiting members of Congress that 'Iran has the capability now to make one bomb' or it 'could wait and make several bombs in a year or two'. But the most memorable example of Netanyahu exaggerating the threat of Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon came in September 2012, when the Israeli leader took to the UN general assembly podium armed with a cartoon-style drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse. Netanyahu warned the world that Iran was enriching uranium so quickly that it was on track to be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear device within months. He then used a marker pen to draw a red line across the cartoon bomb, to highlight the stage of the nuclear process where he claimed Iran had to be stopped. Netanyahu warned that Iran could produce a working weapon by the following spring or 'at most by next summer'. Nearly 13 years after Netanyahu stood before the world to cry wolf about Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons, he used the same pretext – that Iran is 'within a few months' of having a bomb – to launch a devastating war against Tehran. Netanyahu then successfully pulled the US into the conflict, promising Trump a quick victory if the US used its 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs to destroy Fordow, Iran's most heavily fortified nuclear facility. Unfortunately, Trump heeded the siren call of a US ally who has spent decades manipulating intelligence and public fears to exaggerate the nuclear threat posed by Iran. And the people of the Middle East will pay the highest price for yet another reckless war built on a lie. Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and an associate professor of journalism at New York University
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
US strikes on Iran leave hopes for nuclear diplomacy in tatters
PARIS/ISTANBUL, June 22 (Reuters) - In a bid to defuse the conflict over Iran's nuclear program, foreign ministers from Europe's top three powers hurried to meet their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva. Those hopes collapsed on Saturday when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iran's three main nuclear sites, in support of Israel's military campaign. "It's irrelevant to ask Iran to return to diplomacy," Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araqchi, visibly angry, told reporters in Istanbul on Sunday, promising a "response" to the U.S. strikes. "It's not time for diplomacy now." Trump, who said the U.S. airstrikes "obliterated" the sites, warned in a televised speech on Saturday the U.S. could attack other targets in Iran if no peace deal was reached and urged Tehran to return to the negotiating table. Reuters spoke to seven Western diplomats and analysts who said the prospect of negotiations was negligeable for now, with an unbridgeable gap between Washington's demand for zero enrichment by Iran and Tehran's refusal to abandon its nuclear program. "I think the prospects of effective diplomacy at this point are slim to none," said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank headquartered in Washington. "I'm much more worried about escalation, both in the short and the long term." According to European diplomats, the three European allies - Britain, France and Germany - were not made aware of Trump's decision to strike Iran ahead of time. French President Emmanuel Macron had promised on Saturday - just before the U.S. strikes - to accelerate the nuclear talks, following a call with his Iranian counterpart. One European diplomat, who asked not to be identified, acknowledged there was now no way of holding a planned second meeting with Iran in the coming week. In the wake of the U.S. military action, any European diplomatic role appears likely to be secondary. Trump on Friday dismissed Europe's efforts towards resolving the crisis, saying Iran only wanted to speak to the United States. Three diplomats and analysts said any future talks between Iran and Washington would likely be through regional intermediaries Oman and Qatar, once Tehran decides how to respond to the U.S. airstrikes on its nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The attacks leave Iran with few palatable options on the table. Since Israel began its military campaign against Iran on June 13, some in Tehran have raised the prospect of withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to signal Iran's determination to accelerate enrichment, but experts say that would represent a considerable escalation and likely draw a forceful response from Washington. Acton, of the Carnegie Endowment, said Iran's most obvious means for retaliation is its short-range ballistic missiles, that could be used to target U.S. forces and assets in the region. But any military response by Iran carried the risk of miscalculation, he said. "On the one hand, they want a strong enough response that they feel the U.S. has actually paid a price. On the other hand, they don't want to encourage further escalation," he said. Even before the U.S. strikes, Friday's talks in Geneva showed little sign of progress amid a chasm between the two sides and in the end no detailed proposals were put forward, three diplomats said. Mixed messaging may have also undermined their own efforts, diplomats said. European positions on key issues like Iran's enrichment program have hardened in the past 10 days with the Israeli strikes and the looming threat of U.S. bombing. The three European powers, known as the E3, were parties to a 2015 nuclear deal that Trump abandoned three years later during his first term. Both the Europeans and Tehran believed they had a better understanding of how to get a realistic deal given the E3 have been dealing with Iran's nuclear programme since 2003. But the Europeans have had a difficult relationship with Iran in recent months as they sought to pressure it over its ballistic missiles programme, support for Russia and detention of European citizens. France, which was the keenest to pursue negotiations, has in the last few days suggested Iran should move towards zero enrichment, which until now was not an E3 demand given Iran's red line on the issue, two European diplomats said. Britain has also adopted a tougher stance more in tune with Washington and that was expressed in Geneva, the diplomats said. And Germany's new government appeared to go in the same direction, although it was more nuanced. "Iran has to accept zero enrichment eventually," said one EU official. A senior Iranian official on Saturday showed disappointment at the Europeans' new stance, saying their demands were "unrealistic", without providing further details. In a brief joint statement on Sunday, which acknowledged the U.S. strikes, the European countries said they would continue their diplomatic efforts. "We call upon Iran to engage in negotiations leading to an agreement that addresses all concerns associated with its nuclear program," it said, adding the Europeans stood ready to contribute "in coordination with all parties". David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, a Paris-based think tank, said Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's government had taken advantage of the Europeans for years to gain time as it developed its nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities. "The European attempt ended in failure," he said. However, the Europeans still have one important card to play. They are the only ones who, as party to the nuclear accord, can launch its so-called "snapback mechanism", which would reimpose all previous UN sanctions on Iran if it is found to be in violation of the agreement's terms. Diplomats said, prior to the U.S. strikes, the three countries had discussed an end-August deadline to activate it as part of a 'maximum pressure' campaign on Tehran. In total, the U.S. launched 75 precision-guided munitions, including more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, and more than 125 military aircraft in the operation against the three nuclear sites, U.S. officials said. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday warned Iran against retaliation and said both public and private messages had been sent to Iran "in multiple channels, giving them every opportunity to come to the table." Five previous rounds of indirect negotiations between the United States and Iran collapsed after a U.S. proposal at the end of May called for Iran to abandon uranium enrichment. It was rejected by Tehran, leading to Israel launching its attack on Iran after Trump's 60-day deadline for talks had expired. Iran has repeatedly said from then on that it would not negotiate while at war. Even after Israel struck, Washington reached out to Iran to resume negotiations, including offering a meeting between the Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Istanbul, according to two European diplomats and an Iranian official. That was rebuffed by Iran, but Araqchi did continue direct contacts with US Special envoy Steve Witkoff, three diplomats told Reuters. One of the challenges in engaging with Iran, experts say, is that no-one can be sure of the extent of the damage to its nuclear program. With the IAEA severely restricted in its access to Iranian sites, it is unclear whether Tehran has hidden enrichment facilities. A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow, the site producing the bulk of Iran's uranium refined to up to 60%, had been moved to an undisclosed location before the U.S. attack there. Acton, of the Carnegie Endowment, said that - putting aside from the damage to its physical installations - Iran had thousands of scientists and technicians involved in the enrichment program, most of whom had survived the U.S. and Israeli attacks. "You can't bomb knowledge," said Acton.
