Confusion over damage to Iran's nuclear sites bodes ill for talks

On June 22, the US sent seven stealth bombers, backed by fighter jets and submarines firing cruise missiles, to target three Iranian nuclear facilities. The operation came off the back of a wave of Israeli strikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities. Nine days on from the US air raid, the dust has not yet settled. If anything, the picture has grown much cloudier.

According to US President Donald Trump, the three targeted facilities were “totally obliterated”, setting Iran’s nuclear programme back years. Assessments from others – including Iran, the UN and even one of America’s own intelligence agencies – have said otherwise. Iran, for its part, insists the damage was minimal, its facilities are resilient and its programme – which it calls “peaceful” – is undeterred.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said on Saturday the damage was “not total”, and that Iran’s enrichment capacity could bounce back in a matter of months. This echoes the findings of a report from one of the US’s own intelligence agencies, albeit one issued with “low confidence”, leaked last week.

Iran says it needs time before talks with US but 'doors of diplomacy will never slam shut'

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The confusion over the truth of Iran’s nuclear capabilities is not merely a frustrating detail in the ongoing saga of Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the West. It is, in fact, at the very heart of the matter. Iran’s nuclear ambitions, questions around their motivation and the anxieties that have arisen as a result have been the source of much bloodshed in the region for decades.

The US operation added, in an extremely dangerous way, to that cycle of violence. But had it provided a coda to the Iranian nuclear programme in the form of the “total obliteration” Mr Trump speaks of, it would be easier now to imagine a way forward. The crippling of the nuclear programme would place Tehran under unprecedented pressure to forge a new path in its relationships with the rest of the region and the world.

But if Iran’s enrichment capacity remains intact – despite the assassination of a number of top nuclear scientists and the bombardment of buildings, and particularly given the amount of technology and human capital in nuclear research the country has amassed – then concerns about Tehran’s ambitions would remain. And, if that is the case, the violence of the 12-day war did more to perpetuate the conflict than to resolve it.

There needs to be a return to the talks upon which the US and Iran had embarked but it must be with the intention of coming to an agreement – not to allow any time to be wasted. For diplomacy to succeed, there must be a shared baseline of facts. In the current climate, both sides seem more interested in bluster and posturing than they do in transparency and good-faith talks. In this context, any attempt to revive negotiations risks being built wasted.

Winning a lasting ceasefire between Iran and Israel and its ally the US will require not only military restraint, but a renewed commitment to clarity and honesty, and a desire to restore substance over spectacle. If that can be achieved in the narrow scope of this particular conflict, it could open the door to the resolution of many other related conflicts in the region, from Palestine to Yemen.

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