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Kristen Talman
Okay, so it's been a lot happening in the past. At this point now, nearly over 72 hours since the U.S. joined Israeli strikes on Iran over the weekend on February 28th. You're really an expert in nuclear deterrence. I'm interested from what we can see now, your view on, is this a regional war? Is this something that signals a shift in the larger nuclear deterrence lens as the pretense of the U.S. and Israel going in was Iran having nuclear capabilities or on the way to building them?
Ankit Panda
Yeah, so I think there's two issues there. I mean, first on the regional war issue, I think that's very much part of Iran's strategy here. I think they have observed the failures, I would argue, of the way in which they tried to impose costs on Israel specifically during the 12-day war in 2025 and with operations True Promise 1 and 2, the April and October strikes in 2024. So now they've tried to essentially broaden this conflict to the entire Gulf region. We also, I think, today have seen reports of strikes in Azerbaijan, with the goal being that they will generate diplomatic pressure on the United States and Israel to stand down as these countries will be reluctant to, I think, pull themselves into combat operations beyond trying to defend their own territory against ballistic missile and drone attacks in particular. Now, the second question about nuclear deterrence and capabilities, that's obviously been a big part of the U.S. rationale for this war, that there was an imminent threat, despite the claims last year that Iran's nuclear capabilities were obliterated. I don't think that there's a credible case to be made that Iran was close to seeking or weaponizing a nuclear capability. The death of Ayatollah Khamenei, for instance, I think really opens up some interesting questions. His son, who's now going to be, I think, the next supreme leader, does appear to be of a more hardline character. How many did have in place this longstanding policy of limiting Iran's missile ranges and actually keeping Iran away from overtly seeking nuclear weapons? So that could also change now.
Kristen Talman
Yeah. And I want to, can we, I'm going to zoom out really quickly and then we can go into more specifics just because, as you mentioned, different theaters are opening every single day. Turkey, not a target, did have to get involved. Rajon, as you mentioned, I mean, if you are any other nation state in the world that has, you know, any interest or in developing any nuclear capabilities, whether that just be nuclear energy all the way to a kinetic weapon. What does this what does this war tell you or what's the calculation happening? I mean, I'm thinking of places like North Korea or, you know, is having is having a nuclear deterrent. If you know, is that how is that calculus being drawn out?
Ankit Panda
Yeah. So I think the North Koreans are a good example. Right. And, you know, there is a difference when you are an adversary of the United States. Like Iran has long been an adversary. North Korea has been an adversary. Iraq, Libya in the past. Look, I think I think this fits into a pattern that the North Koreans have argued for a very long time. explains their decision to seek nuclear weapons, which is that, you know, Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein made the mistake of diplomatically engaging with the United States and relinquishing what were burgeoning WMD programs after the first Gulf War and then in the early 2000s with Libya. And both Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi met the same fate as Ayatollah al-Khamene years ago. And the North Koreans have literally cited this when they explained, you know, why they're never going to give up their nuclear capability. And on some level, they have a point. I think the North Koreans do actually deter the kind of thing that we are seeing happening against the Iranians through their nuclear capabilities. Nuclear weapons do, I think, shape the calculus of attackers in a way that even a very large conventional ballistic missile arsenal like Iran's has not been able to, right? And look, I mean, we can sort of quibble about have the Iranians actually used their missile arsenal to the greatest effect. I would argue no. There's been a lot of kind of operational and tactical shortfalls. The Israelis have made those problems worse for the Iranians by attacking their command and control both during the 12-day war and this conflict. But I think this narrative that the bomb does have deterrent effects on great powers is going to spread further around the world. But I think it's also important to remember the reasons why Iran was not crossing those thresholds. They were in the nonproliferation treaty. They had verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Verification, by the way, which the 12-day war really put an end to because the IAEA has been unable to get back into many of those facilities. So like many of your listeners might have seen, there's this very specific figure that we have out there, about 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. The only reason we know that's the amount is because the IAEA told us that in May 2025 before the Israelis went in and started the 12-day war. So for other countries around the world, I think there's a number of factors here, right? Are you an adversary of the United States? do you already have an existing civilian nuclear program? Are you willing to kick the IAEA out or leave the NPT? If so, how are you going to prevent yourself from potentially facing the kind of attack that Iran is now facing anyways? I think the Iranians, they also, I think, just misinterpreted the level of good faith in the United States on trying to engage diplomatically before leading up to this conflict. I just don't think the Trump administration was ever willing to compromise on the core issues that would have allowed for a deal to manifest, which were the Iranian red lines on enrichment and limits on ballistic missiles. So there are some lessons here that I think other countries will take away. But obviously, you know, there are limits to these analogies. And the Iranian case, I think, is a pretty unique one.
Kristen Talman
Yeah, I want to double tap on that North Korea part, A, because of your background, but also, Right. You mentioned North Koreans have repeatedly cited not engaging with the Americans for the reason that they've seen the fade in Libya, now Iran, etc. But under the first term, Kim Jong-un did meet with Donald Trump. So is the thought that the second term is just completely different? We have seen the North Koreans have stuck to their hard line despite a change, for example, in the South Korean administration being less hostile, looking for engagement. Is it is it just that the first and second terms are so different? Because Trump also went after leadership in Iran in his first term.
Ankit Panda
Yeah. So, you know, I would draw a distinction between engaging with the United States and denuclearization. Right. So the the basis of engaging with the United States during the first Trump administration was, I think, to try and build a different type of relationship with the U.S. I think the North Koreans wanted to essentially codify a co-equal relationship with the United States on the basis that they possess nuclear weapons. The U.S. has nuclear weapons. And so let's try to work towards a new relationship. You know, this, by the way, is actually Kim Jong-un's position now. It's just that nobody in the U.S. really wants to hear it. But Kim has talked about peaceful coexistence as sort of something that he'd be willing to talk to the United States about. U.S. policy is still trying to seek denuclearization, which the North Koreans since 2022 actually have basically said is a complete impossibility now that there will be no negotiations about denuclearization. They have made it a constitutional reality in their country that they are a nuclear possessor state. And I don't think Kim shows any signs of really moving away from that. But on the notion of decapitation, what's interesting here is that the North Koreans have also studied the American way of war very closely for a long time. And so in the very first days of the Iraq War, the United States tried to kill Saddam Hussein unsuccessfully. There was bad intelligence about a supposed site where Saddam was thought to be. It was called Dora Farms. This was publicly reported at the time by the Associated Press. And the U.S. failed, but the North Koreans, I think, have known this for a very long time, that if the U.S. comes for your regime, they will begin with an attack on the leadership. And especially for North Korea, which is a monolithic kind of monarchy, effectively, where the Kim family's rule is absolute, the best way to deter that is through nuclear weapons. And more specifically now, Kim has actually told the United States and South Korea that even if he's killed, North Korea will automatically and immediately retaliate with nuclear weapons. So he's really interested in trying to avoid that particular type of outcome.
Kristen Talman
Yeah. What's a little bit concerning just globally and for really anyone is that it feels like arms control is out the window. And the lesson that's being taken from this is that if you don't want to end up like Maduro, maybe you should have nukes. If you don't want to end up like Ron, maybe you should have nukes. I mean, what does that really tell us about the future of arms control and nuclear deterrence? Is there is is nuclear deterrence just that everyone has to nuke up and that's everyone's just deterring by all having the capabilities? I mean, I mean, granted, there is that element of adversary versus, you know, foe versus friend. But I'd kind of like your thoughts on just the future of arms control that you're seeing it now or what you're seeing in the coming decade.
Ankit Panda
Yeah, so I think you're hitting on something really important, which is that nuclear weapons and the role that they play in the international arena have definitely taken on a new salience, right? Very much unlike, I think, anything we've seen since the end of the Cold War. And it's not just what we've seen in the first year of the second Trump administration. It's also Russia's war on Ukraine, just a growing threat environment from Eastern Europe to the Korean Peninsula to the Taiwan Strait, the prospect of great power conflict. So there's a lot more interest in what nuclear weapons do and don't do. The issue of nuclear proliferation is back in a way that we really haven't seen in a while, right? So we've talked about Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea. These were adversaries of the United States that were very much part of the post-Cold War nonproliferation agenda. How do you keep these countries from building nuclear weapons? India and Pakistan got out of the barn in 1998, but neither country was an explicit adversary of the United States. And, of course, the U.S. accommodated India in a pretty important way. The problem that's also back now is allied proliferation, right? So it's not just that the United States is going around the world attacking non-nuclear weapon states like Iran, which were out of compliance with their NPT obligations, but still non-nuclear weapon states. But the U.S. is also, I think, threatening its allies and indicating to its allies that it might not be the kind of partner that they might want to see. And so from Berlin to Warsaw to Seoul to Tokyo to Stockholm, you are seeing talk of proliferation, right? Copenhagen as well, obviously, with the Greenland threats. And that is the return of an old dynamic. This was something the U.S. dealt with quite a bit during the Cold War where allies had doubts if the U.S. would really fight a nuclear war if it came to that on their behalf, potentially risking attacks on its own homeland. And so the proliferation dynamic is very much taking on a new character. But we should be careful about projecting outwards from here because it's not that these countries that are currently having a debate about should we have the bomb, not all of them will go ahead and build the bomb because as I've sort of already hinted at with the Iranian case and the North Korean case, it's a challenging thing to do. It takes a massive industrial effort. If you're in the nonproliferation treaty, you have to sort of weigh the effects of, you know, kicking out inspectors, leaving the treaty or trying to do it covertly, potentially being discovered. How do you sort of deter preventive attacks? Like, you know, if the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans want to have a vote about a South Korean or a Polish nuclear weapon program, they will have a vote. And all of these issues, I think, are going to weigh on the proliferation conversation. But fundamentally, I think at the center of our conversation today is the United States, right? So can the U.S. go back to playing the traditional role that it's played since essentially the mid-1960s in disfavoring the spread of nuclear weapons to friend and foe alike, right? The nonproliferation standard ideally should be independent of geopolitical concerns. It wasn't with the India case, right? India was seen as kind of a partner of the United States. And so the U.S. said, well, the Indians built the bomb. This is not great for our nonproliferation policy, but we need India on our side to compete with China. So this is, I think, where we are today. And it's a really dangerous moment, I would argue. We're also heading into a review conference for the nonproliferation treaty in just a few weeks. Very, very poor timing all around with everything we've just been talking about.
Kristen Talman
Yeah. One last question on this is you've in your writing over the past year sort of argued for a diplomatic off-ramp, coercive measures, but not to the degree that we're seeing now. Is there an off-ramp now? I mean, you can't really just turn the clock and go back. Who's to say what's to happen in Iran? Is it regime change? this, but any government that comes in, would they just be looking, you know, potentially build a nuclear weapon just where they left off and where the current or the, you know, the regime that we knew and know at this moment? But what is any sort of off ramp to ending this? Do you see any?
Ankit Panda
Well, so there's a lot of moving parts at the moment, right? And so the Iranians have carried out a succession process. There is still a state. State capacity in Iran, I think, is slowly going to start collapsing. That very much seems to be part of how Israel sees its theory of victory here. And by the way, I would actually argue that Israel and the United States want some different things in this conflict. It's actually a lot clearer to me what the Israelis want. The Americans tend to be all over the place in terms of what this war is about fundamentally, including the president and many of his key advisors. The broader question, though, I think you're hitting on something really important, is that this is a really intense conventional war in a country of 90 million people with 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent unaccounted for. And so what happens to those materials, the knowledge, the centrifuge components, the potential covert facilities we don't know about is really important. And, you know, these reports that the U.S. is arming, you know, Kurdish militias to potentially go into Iran. There is, I think, a really, really important set of questions there about what happens to these nuclear materials, to Iran's civilian program and knowledge. It's difficult for me to imagine that any government that comes out of this in Iran, be it kind of, you know, the new Khamenei regime under the new supreme leader or something perhaps more revolutionary or even more acquiescent to the West, won't be interested in, you know, at least sustaining a nuclear program of some kind. And so this issue is far from over. And no matter how this conflict ends, I do think the only way to sustainably address the nuclear problem will be through a diplomatic arrangement. But of course, it's easier said than done, just given how, I mean, for the Iranians, I think, you know, the narrative that the North Koreans have is now starting to sink in that, you know, allowing the IAEA in and doing a deal with the West was actually the source of this crisis and the source of all of their problems. So it's going to be extremely difficult coming forward.
Kristen Talman
Okay, Light, I have one more quick question. We have four minutes. I think this will be a short one, though. You mentioned at the top that the Trump administration had said that under the strikes last year, last summer, the nuclear program was obliterated. Was that then, you know, in some ways a lie from the administration that's being seen in the nuclear expert realm? Or is it just classic that administrations overreact? And I know that sounds a little politically motivated of a question. I'm not trying to frame it like that, but.
Ankit Panda
No, I mean, look, obliterated doesn't have like a technical definition, right? There were a lot of a lot of things that were left unaddressed with the military strikes. And this is why, you know, I opposed military strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, like all throughout after, especially after a certain point when it became very clear that what bombing alone could accomplish, you know, if you like, I think the way you have to think about this is, you know, let's take the JCPOA and let's take what the bombing accomplished, right, this was a big debate in Iran policy for a while. Do you do diplomacy or do you just go in and start a war and bomb them? And that's going to be a better outcome. If the JCPOA had resulted in the outcome that the bombings got us last year, I think people would have very much been really critical of that agreement as, you know, completely unacceptable. And of course, that's not the standard that we held the bombings to. And so the Iranians were left with, you know, so it is true that, you know, Fordo and Natanz were bombed. Those were centrifuge facilities. Centrifuges are these very like highly precise instruments that are very sensitive to like, you know, vibrations and shocks from outside. So they could actually, you know, just blow themselves up. That's actually how the Stuxnet worm, that kind of the cyber attack that the United States carried out against Israeli centrifuges or Iranian centrifuges worked, which was basically by interrupting their power flow. So, yes, I mean, you could argue that, you know, there was damage caused. But again, highly enriched uranium, right? Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state enriching uranium in gas form to 60%. That's very close to weapons grade. Weapons grade is generally considered 90% and up. Enriching uranium is not a linear process. So going from 60 to 90 requires far less effort than going from, let's say, 3.67%, which is where the JCPOA had it, to 60%. So the material was unaccounted for. The Iranians had a whole bunch of centrifuge components that they'd stockpiled that we didn't have eyes on. They had the ability to set up new undeclared facilities. In fact, there's quite a bit of speculation about a new facility near Natanz, what's happening inside there, other facilities, of course, that we just don't know about. So it made the problem a lot worse. It interrupted what we call continuity of knowledge for verification, right? The IAEA, the only way the IAEA can really be certain that no material has been diverted from civilian uses in Iran is by maintaining continuity, right? So when you don't know part of the story of what's been happening in the country, it becomes very difficult to then say with confidence that, yes, we feel that we can say the Iranians haven't done something that we don't know about and diverted material. So it just made the problem a whole lot worse. And again, obliteration, that was, I think, an entirely political narrative to frame the bombings as being something justified that advanced the nonproliferation cause. And fundamentally, you know, it wasn't about nonproliferation for either Israel or the United States. It was it was ultimately about regime change. Like after the 12 day war, the position I held was that the Israelis, at least, would be going back into Iran within about, you know, six to 12 months time. And that turned out to be accurate, except now the U.S. is now also pulled into this much broader regional war.
Kristen Talman
Okay. Thank you so much. We got, you know, one minute left, so I'll let you, I'll let you go. Um, but I really appreciate it. And let me hit, where's my tab. Let me hit, uh, stop record.