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--:-- Annie Minoff: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Friday, June 13th.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Coming up on the show, Israel's unprecedented strike on Iran. At the center of last night's strikes is a concern that Iran may be closer than ever to becoming a nuclear power.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Well, it's a huge deal because it's never been done before. Our colleague Michael Gordon covers national security from Washington, D.C. There have been a lot of doubts outside the Israeli government and even in Washington whether it would be possible for the Israelis to do lasting damage to Iran's nuclear program. So it's unprecedented.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Enriched uranium is essential for the development of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. And Iran has been working on uranium enrichment for years, including under the terms of a 2015 nuclear deal that the U.S. later pulled out of.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Iran has two main enrichment sites. One is underground at Natanz. Another, Fordo, is located deep within a mountain. Iran maintains that it is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. They say it's a nuclear program for purely peaceful purposes, but in the view of experts, it may be a civil nuclear program, but it's one that contains the option for Iran to proceed down a military path, and the telltale signs for that is the level of enrichment work Iran's been doing.
--:-- Annie Minoff: In recent months, the pace of Iran's nuclear work has rapidly increased. They've accumulated enough fissile material that they could have more than half a dozen bombs worth of material within a few weeks if they were so determined. Then it would take them another period of time to take this weapons uranium and fashion it into a warhead that could explode.
--:-- Michael Gordon: The programs expanded. This has not gone unnoticed by the international community including by the UN's nuclear watchdog agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly expressed concerns about a number of matters. Iran was enriching uranium at 60 percent, which is a step toward weapons-grade material and was concerned that Iran was moving in the wrong direction, although it hadn't acquired any further advice.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Yesterday, the IAEA's Board of Member States, led by the U.S. and European powers, voiced that concern, declaring that Iran had crossed a line by failing to comply with its nonproliferation obligations. Immediately afterwards, Iran responded with its own announcement. It said it was on the cusp of opening a third nuclear enrichment site.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program since April. Representatives from the two countries have met for five rounds of talks. The U.S. goal from the beginning under President Trump has been that Iran can have nuclear reactors, it can have a civil nuclear program, but what it can't do is enrich its own uranium.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And the thinking behind that is that this would deprive Iran of amassing the material for a potential nuclear weapon. Iran's position is that they will never forego the right to enrich uranium. And indeed, they had secured that right under the 2015 nuclear agreement. So there was a fundamental contradiction at the core of these talks.
--:-- Michael Gordon: The U.S. and Iran seemed far apart in negotiations. Still, the two countries planned to have another round of talks this Sunday. Steve Whitcoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, had proposed a framework for resolving the conflict. Iran was expected to respond. And President Trump appeared hopeful.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I want to have an agreement with Iran. We're fairly close to an agreement. We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement. He was optimistic in his pronouncements. Nobody else was optimistic. Among those who weren't optimistic was Israel. Israel was not part of these negotiations, but it has long viewed Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Israel's perspective has been that they were very skeptical that Iran would forego the right to enrichment and make the kind of concessions at the negotiating table that Israel believes is required to roll back Iran's program. They were concerned Iran was going to play for time in the talks.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Trump had talked about a two-month deadline, which, by the way, is up now. But Israel was concerned to become three months, four months, five months, a year. And then during the course of that, Iran would be making gains in its program. Israel was done waiting for the U.S. and Iran to reach an agreement.
--:-- Michael Gordon: And so, just days before the negotiations were set to happen... That next next Israel attacks on Iran unfolded in waves overnight.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Who and what did Israel target in this attack? Well, they targeted the senior military leadership. They targeted a half dozen or so Iranian nuclear scientists. They targeted Natanz, which is a major nuclear installation. That's what we know.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, acknowledged the damage Friday morning. He said that the country would quickly replace the military commanders and scientists who'd been killed.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Is it too early to say what the impact of this strike will be on Iran's nuclear program? It's a little early. I mean, the common view has been that Israel could damage Iran's nuclear program but not eliminate it. And that not even the U.S. could eliminate it because some of it's underground, because it's dispersed.
--:-- Michael Gordon: But Israel is challenging that theory. And their contention is they can kill enough personnel and they can do enough destruction to the Iranian nuclear infrastructure that it'll set back the program in a decisive way. According to a senior Israeli official, the country has planned 14 days of operations.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the goal of the operation was to roll back the existential threat that he said Iran poses to Israel.
--:-- Michael Gordon: So we talked about how the U.S. was in the midst of these negotiations when these attacks happened. What do you make of that timing? Well, Israel wanted a strike earlier than it did. They ran into some opposition from President Trump who wanted to try negotiations.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And Israel's been using the argument, well, you tried negotiations for two months and you're not getting too far, so it's time to move on. There was a degree of impatience on Israel's part. But the fact that talks were scheduled worked to Israel's advantage because Iran clearly did not anticipate this attack.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Thursday night. If Iran's leaders had been gambling that Israel wouldn't strike in the midst of negotiations, they were proven wrong. Iran's generals were not in their bunker. Their scientists weren't hiding in secure facilities. They were hit and eliminated and were vulnerable in a way that they wouldn't have been if they had thought Israel was on the cusp of military action.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Iran's foreign minister asked the U.N. to condemn Israel's attack, saying in a letter that the actions, quote, amount to a declaration of war.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Did Trump know that this attack was coming? What has he said about that? He said, including to the Wall Street Journal, that he was informed in advance. He hasn't given particulars as to what he knew at what point.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And since the attack appears to be successful, he's gone from cautioning against it to endorsing it. He's almost taking credit for it at this point. He said it was very effective and that Iran should yield now and make concessions or they're going to get a hit again.
--:-- Michael Gordon: So he went from saying publicly Israel should not do this to saying it was an effective means of leverage.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. wasn't involved in the strikes but didn't exclude the possibility that the U.S. could help Israel defend itself.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Could the U.S. be pulled further into this conflict between Israel and Iran? Yes, the U.S. can be expected to move more assets to the Middle East. And it's very logical for some of those to be involved in trying to blunt attacks on Israel by Iranian drones and Iranian missiles.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So if the U.S. is helping to provide a shield for Israel, which is wielding a sword against Iran, it's implicitly involved in the conflict.
--:-- Michael Gordon: What will you be watching for in the coming days? Well, the Israelis have some big challenges ahead. People are looking to see what these Iranians do by way of a military response.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There is also a question whether some of the Iranian military establishment might blame the United States for what happened and feel that the United States is complicit and take military action against U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf by firing missiles or drones at them.
--:-- Michael Gordon: That's a big concern. Secretary Rubio warned Iran not to do that. There's a risk for Iran in doing it. They already have their hands full dealing with Israel. Do they really want to deal with the United States at the same time?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I would think not. But there is certainly a possibility that Iran might try to broaden the conflict by taking on the United States and the region, though it's been careful not to do so at this point.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Today, Iran struck back at Israel, firing dozens of missiles, which Israel said it was working to intercept.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The U.S. Navy has directed a destroyer towards the eastern Mediterranean. A second could follow. And the Trump administration has said that U.S. negotiators will be in Oman on Sunday to continue talks. It's unclear whether Iran will meet them at the negotiating table.
--:-- Michael Gordon: Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard. Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Catherine Anderson, Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, Nathan Singapak, Griffin Tanner, So Wiley, and Blue Dot Sessions.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Fact Checking by Jennifer Gorin and Mary Mathis. Thanks for listening. See you Monday.
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