What is next for Iran’s nuclear programme?

After its recent airstrikes against Iran's facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, the U.S. has been claiming it has set back the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons ambitions by decades and nullified the country’s ability to make a nuclear weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

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The question of whether Iran actually has nuclear weapons is important because of the U.S.’s history of attempts to force regime changes in foreign countries on the pretext of threats they pose, including with WMDs. Iran currently doesn’t have anuclear weapon — but that may not be the only important question.

Doubts remain in the global arms control community over whether US bombs — including the “bunker buster" massive ordinance penetrators (MOPs) designed to destroy subsurface structures — were able to damage subterranean enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo and Iran's stockpile of 60% enriched uranium.The latter is of particular interest. Its existence, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated amounted to 400 kg in May, allows Iran to enrich it further to weapons-grade uranium in a matter of days, reducing the ‘breakout’ time within which it can be ready with a nuclear warhead.Using high-resolution satellite data provided by private operators like Maxar, experts have spotted trucks moving in and out of the Fordo facility in the days leading up to the bombing. They have interpreted this to mean Tehran may have anticipated the bombs, including the use of MOPs, and moved fissile material and equipment away to safer locales.

Indeed, Financial Times reported on June 26 that “preliminary intelligence assessments” shared with European governments suggest Iran's 60% enriched stockpile survived the US strikes “largely intact” and that it wasn't “concentrated” in Fordo when the bombs fell.In posts on X.com, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, among others also discussed satellite images showing signs of special tunnels where Iran may have moved its enriched stockpile for safekeeping.