Iran Works in the Shadows To Rebuild Its Nuclear Program After American and Israeli Airstrikes

More than a week after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, attention in Washington and the Gulf is quietly shifting eastward to another simmering question: How far has Iran advanced in rebuilding its nuclear program since the June strikes by Israel and the United States? With diplomacy fragile and surveillance limited, Tehran’s nuclear trajectory remains both contested and consequential — a potential spoiler to a rare moment of regional calm.“Nobody wants to see more fighting,” one White House-connected source tells the New York Sun on condition of anonymity. “But Iran is a problem that cannot be ignored.”A Fragile PauseThe United States’ June air campaign, which targeted key enrichment facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan soon after Israel had struck key targets, was intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability. Yet the results are murky. According to one preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, the strikes “may have set back Iran’s nuclear program only a matter of months.” The Pentagon later estimated the degradation at “one to two years.” “It is not clear how much of Iran’s enrichment capacity and uranium stockpiles were wiped out or relocated,” one senior U.S. official told reporters. “While surface infrastructure was hit, Iran’s underground assets remain operational.”A leading analyst in defense and nuclear strategy, John Wood, agrees that Iran’s recovery is well underway. “Iran is rebuilding its nuclear capability, including at Isfahan,” he tells the Sun. “While Iran can rebuild its infrastructure, it can’t simply replace the technical knowledge of its assassinated nuclear scientists. In that regard, it is going to have to look to North Korea, and perhaps Russia.” But, Mr. Wood suggested, any perception that Iran is progressing toward a full nuclear warfare capability will trigger another military response. “Whenever Iran is judged to have reached or be close to breakout, in all likelihood Israel and or the USA will strike again,” he said. That balancing act — preserving the Gaza détente while managing Tehran’s nuclear threat — is now at the heart of Washington’s Middle East strategy.Rebuilding Under PressureSince the airstrikes, Iran appears to be moving into a phase of consolidation and incremental rebuilding.According to a detailed assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the U.S. and Israeli attacks “temporarily halted uranium enrichment.” What remains unclear, the assessment says, is “how quickly Iran can rebuild its conventional military deterrence or its nuclear enrichment infrastructure.”The president of defense and intelligence firm The Ulysses Group, Andrew Lewis, concurred that Iran is “most certainly” working to rebuild its nuclear capability.”“There is no doubt Iran suffered significant facility and manufacturing damage to its nuclear capabilities as a result of Operation Rising Lion and the U.S. strikes. But it is also plausible that much of their enriched uranium remains buried at Fordow or other locations,” he said. “The basic know-how is probably still in place.”Beyond the damage to its nuclear infrastructure, Iran is believed to have lost at least 20 key scientists and engineers in Israeli attacks, according to Israeli media reports. But Mr. Lewis still sees rebuilding the centrifuge cascades as the biggest challenge. “Even if they could evade detection, had access to their enriched uranium, key scientists and funding, I think it would take them close to two years or more to get back to anything like their pre-strike capability,” Mr. Lewis said. The physical rebuilding, however, is only one part of the equation. Iran’s oversight environment has now changed dramatically. The International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to conduct comprehensive verification inspections since the June strikes. While IAEA inspectors have not returned to key sites, Director-General Rafael Grossi said the agency believes that most of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium remains intact.“We don’t have indications that would lead us to believe that there has been major movement of material,” Mr. Grossi told Reuters last month, while acknowledging that “some could have been lost.” A bill passed by Iran’s parliament in late June suspended cooperation with the IAEA, requiring any future access to its nuclear facilities to be approved by the Supreme National Security Council.Iran has also declared it is no longer bound by restrictions agreed to in a landmark 2015 nuclear deal. “From now on, all of the provisions, including the restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program and the related mechanisms, are considered terminated,” the foreign ministry announced last week as the 10-year deal expired.Upgraded centrifuges unaccounted for A September analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security cited IAEA findings that Iran had planned to replace six cascades of IR-1 centrifuges at Fordow with IR-6 centrifuges beginning on or after June 12 – the day before Israel began its airstrikes.Had the work gone ahead, Iran would have installed about 1,000 of the IR-6 machines, which can enrich uranium roughly 10 times faster than the older IR-1 design. The upgrade would have allowed Iran not only to produce weapons-grade material more quickly, but also to use fewer centrifuges, making detection and disruption significantly harder.The problem: The IAEA can no longer verify whether those machines were delivered, moved underground, destroyed, or installed. Iran’s failure to account for them and its lack of transparency raise alarms. But even if Iran is able to rebuild its centrifuges, it needs to find a way to protect them against renewed airstrikes.“Their air and missile defenses were shown to be nearly worthless during Israel’s operations, and the Iranian parliament just moved emergency defense funding which has a heavy focus on rebuilding military capacity — particularly air and missile defenses,” Mr. Lewis said. In short, analysts believe Iran is balancing its nuclear rebuild with military survival and proxy force expenditures.A Strategic CrossroadsFor American policymakers, especially those aligned with conservative national-security priorities, the key takeaway is that military strikes alone did not permanently eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat. The operation inflicted damage and bought time, but Iran retains the capability and strategic will to rebuild.“It is a logical certainty that Iran is continuing to develop its nuclear capabilities,” global risk analyst Dennis Santiago tells the Sun.“The Iranians aren’t stupid. They know full well that to be a nation of stature, they will need a lot of electricity. They also know that to achieve true 21st-century stability, they need the military power to force the volatile Middle East and broader world to leave them alone.” That leaves the United States strategy at a critical inflection point. Escalating against Iran too aggressively could undermine the fragile truce in Gaza. But if Iran is allowed to rebuild swiftly and covertly, Gulf states or Israel may feel compelled to act pre-emptively, raising the risk of a broader conflict. Inside the West Wing, aides and military planners are quietly debating what comes next: whether to risk escalation or to keep the pressure simmering below the surface.“The United States should continue to threaten Iran with more strikes against its nuclear infrastructure until such time that Iran publicly abandons its aggressive, behavioral stance versus the rest of the Middle East,” Mr. Santiago argued. “Not just Israel, all of its neighbors. The U.S. must unilaterally take charge in the Middle East.”

Iran Works in the Shadows To Rebuild Its Nuclear Program After American and Israeli Airstrikes

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