Washington
Cnn
–
While the Trump administration seeks to quickly increase military strikes to a diplomatic agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, the latest military assessment and intelligence of the recent American strikes will be essential to inform what the Trump administration must accomplish in future negotiations of Iran.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will have to use this final evaluation of battle damage – including a detailed summary of installation damage and the nuclear material place – to help formulate the American strategy for diplomatic efforts to completely stop the regime’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon in the future, current and old American officials.
“You are not going to negotiation assuming that the other party will tell you everything you need to know about the state of their program,” said Pranay Vaddi, a former senior non-proliferation at the National Security Council.
“We must have a reference base which is established by the American intelligence community before that,” added Vaddi. “If the Trump administration is still determined in a kind of agreement – on which it makes declarations – he must know what they may have gone through military action, compared to what they need to browse the diplomatic process.”
President Donald Trump continues to claim that the Iranian nuclear program has been “fully erased”, which does not reflect an early evaluation of the Defense Intelligence Agency, noting that the attack did not destroy the central components of the country’s nuclear program. Early evaluation shared legislators on the effectiveness of strikes. And Trump’s absolutist statements could also complicate Witkoff’s work, officials said.
Even if the installations themselves have been seriously damaged, this does not mean that the nuclear program itself has been completely destroyed. Before the American strikes, experts and former civil servants had expressed skepticism as to the idea that the nuclear program could be militarily destroyed, noting that there would always be necessary knowledge to support it.
“The fundamental problem is that the equivalence between the success of the bombing and the success of the implementation of the nuclear program consists in putting pressure on this account that there is no threat,” said Beth Sanner, former deputy director of national intelligence. “If you think you have eliminated the nuclear program, you are not treated that there is a residue of this program.”
And although the final evaluation of battle damage is important to take into account, future negotiations with Iran should prioritize the return of the UN nuclear guard dog to Iran, said former officials who worked on previous negotiations in Iran.
“I do not know that there will be an assessment which, I think, is fully viable until there are inspectors on the ground,” said a former senior American official who worked on the negotiations spent in Iran. “We must recreate the type of intrusive verification and monitoring which were in the 2015 agreement.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was present in Iran before the 2015 nuclear agreement was signed during the Obama administration – an agreement from which Trump withdrew the United States during its first mandate – but the presence of IAEA inspectors in the country increased considerably following this agreement.
“The agreement indicated that there were inspectors on the ground 24/7, there was electronic surveillance, there was a process by which – which existed anywhere else in the world – than if there was an intelligence on a suspected site, if Iran, for a period of a few days, could not satisfy EAEA that there was a reason why IAEA could do insistence,” said the official Advantages of IEA inspection efforts.
But this week, the Iranian Parliament has suspended its work with the AIAA this week, due to the “regrettable role” played by the chief of the agency Rafael Grossi, said the Iranian Minister for Foreign Affairs. Iran has accused Grosi of facilitating strikes from the United States and Israelis in Iran, citing a report from the IAEA one day before the Israeli strike, which declared that Iran raped its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
This decision follows years that Iran has made measures to restrict the monitoring of its program by the agency. For example, in 2022, Iran responded by eliminating the surveillance cameras of the key sites after Iran censored Iran on the uranium particles found on unconcluded sites.
The measures that should be taken within the framework of any verifiable agreement on the Iranian nuclear program would probably include: the destruction of the elements of the program that still exist, monitoring any other activity, mixing highly enriched uranium and declaring parts of the program that are used.
In order to prepare to take these measures, the inspectors on the ground would be essential, the former civil servants in a hurry.
“I think that for a long time that US intelligence assessments have not been accepted worldwide as well as authority with regard to the Iranian nuclear program. They would certainly be disputed by Iran. In order to have a successful negotiation, everyone needs at least to agree with the source of the facts of Vienna in Vienna.
“The IAEA will be necessary to develop a new reference of what Iran has exactly, where it is, and to what extent is its state, and it will take time, and it will be based on Iran’s cooperation,” added Holgate.
Access to the IAEA being reduced over the years and practically nonexistent at the moment, the world now has large gaps in its knowledge of the nuclear inventory of Iran. This is particularly true with regard to the place of uranium enriched with Iran.
Trump administration officials have said in recent days that the stock had not been moved before the American strikes, but IEA said that Iran may have moved part of the enriched uranium before being attacked. Vice-President JD Vance said the day after the strikes working on what it was necessary to do with this fuel would be a priority for the United States.
“We are going to work in the coming weeks to make sure that we do something with this fuel. And this is one of the things we are going to have conversations with the Iranians,” said Vance.
Republican representative Michael McCaul, member of the Chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee, cited the importance of having “full accounting” following a briefing classified all members on Capitol Hill earlier this week.
“There is uranium enriched in the facilities that move, but it was not the intention or the mission,” said McCaul. “We need full accounting. This is why Iran must come directly to the table with us, so the AIEA can explain each enriched uranium ounce which is there, I do not think it comes out of the country, I think it is in the facilities.”
The final evaluation of the United States for the United States could take days or even weeks to finish, “Multiple Sources familiar with the Pentagon process told CNN. CIA director John Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that the agency had stressed that a wide effort of the intelligence community was continuing to determine the impact of American strikes on three nuclear sites on three nuclear sites on three of the country’s nuclear sites on Saturday.
The Trump administration was already working on possible conditions to offer Iran to bring them back to talks capable of nuclear agreement before US military strikes occur. But if they are able to bring Iran back to the table, they will then have to enter much more technical talks to set up a legitimate and verifiable affair.
“I think you want to hit while the iron is hot, to try to bring them to the table while they feel weak,” said Sanner. “One of the key requirements of negotiation is to define cataloging mechanisms of the residual capacities of Iran in order to have this conversation and, ultimately, an agreement which is worth the document on which it is written.”