Iranian ICBMs, Shahrud, and an Important Safety Lesson

Jeffrey Lewis 0:00

You are listening to the Arms Control Wong podcast, the leading podcast on arms control disarmament. And that's going to pick that thunk up, Dave. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Scott LaFoy 0:30

And I am Scott LaFoy, producer and occasional contributor for the Arms Control Wonk podcast and blog. And I am here in not quite sunny Monterey this week visiting y'all. What are you talking about not sunny? I can see the ocean. I'm in DC. I have to wear sunscreen to look out my window. This is not counting as sunny right now.

Jeffrey 0:49

Yeah, this is romantic fog, Scott.

Scott 0:52

This is you take long walks on the beach. This is lovely. I'm in three layers in June. This is a weird city. And we have a third person with us today.

Dave Schmerler 1:02

Am I allowed to talk yet?

Scott 1:04

Yeah, you're allowed.

Jeffrey 1:07

Dave has been utterly unable to restrain himself this entire time.

Dave 1:11

I'm sitting on my hands right now because I can't not make noises for the podcast. My name is Dave Schmerler. I'm a research associate at CNS in Monterey with Jeffrey. We have a new mic, by the way, which Dave thought was a person.

Jeffrey 1:25

He was like, we have a new microphone. That's right. His name is Scott. Yeah. And the new microphone is set up in my office. So we're doing kind of a hangout pod. But let us know if you can hear it. Actually, I don't have to ask.

Dave 1:40

Please, in the name of God, do not email me. Scott loves feedback, and it makes the podcast better.

Scott 1:45

Oh, God. I know. It's a new mic, and there's going to be some roughness. But it's good because it means we all can be here, and we don't have to all have some weird headset-y weirdness. So we're all here together, and we're here to talk about Iran. Iran.

Jeffrey 1:58

Yeah, Dave and I, along with Fabian Hinz, who was a German fellow who was here and we're hoping will come back, had a big story about Iran's Shahrud, what are we calling it? Shahrud Space Center, Rocket Center?

Dave 2:15

Solid fuel test and development site, sounds fine.

Jeffrey 2:17

Yeah, the Iranians have two, they have a Space Launch Center, which we all know, the Imam Khomeini Space Launch Center near Semnon. But maybe, I don't know, seven or eight years ago? No, I guess 2013. Correct. In 2013, it was revealed that there was a second site. The second one was discovered in 2013. There were a bunch of questions about exactly what it was.

And thanks to Fabian's historical research, we were able to determine what it was. Correct. And fill in some blanks about Iran's solid-fueled rocketry efforts, which got us on the front page of the New York Times.

Dave 2:54

Yeah. It was pretty cool.

Scott 2:56

So one of the things that was big in this report was essentially, y'all have been doing research on this for years. We had watched the, as you were talking about earlier, we had watched the Sagil come up. The Sagil stopped getting tested in 2011. So one of the, if I remember correctly.

Jeffrey 3:10

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Iran Solid Field Missile Program took a pause in 2011.

Scott 3:15

But a pause is an important phrase because, if I remember correctly, there was a specific naval-in-style event that occurred.

Jeffrey 3:23

Yeah, I mean, I love this story. So Iran, you know, starting around, I guess it was 2008 or 9, there were a series of tests of a medium range solid fueled ballistic missile, which really caught a lot of observers by surprise because we didn't expect Iran to be doing that. And if you actually look, you can see U.S. intelligence estimates start to come around to the idea that if Iran builds an ICBM, it would be solid.

If you look at the National Academy's report on missile defense, which they had a series of classified briefings over, I think, 2010, 2009 and 2010, in which they ended up modeling for missile defense purposes, not a liquid fueled Iranian ICBM, but a solid fueled one. And a lot of people were like, what are you talking about? And I think now we know the answer, which is Iran was developing this solid fueled Under this guy named Tehrani Mohaddam.

Scott 4:27

And y'all were telling me earlier that Mohaddam is fairly important for office culture out here in Monterey. He's a fairly important inspirational figure.

Dave 4:34

That's right. After Fabian left the office, there have been a series of posters of his face with inspirational quotes written on them from the man himself about how moderation is for losers or something along that line.

Jeffrey 4:47

Yeah. So the thing is, Fabian, when he got here, he was really interested in Mohaddam. And we were really interested in this site, Sherwood. And we didn't realize that these two things were going to merge. But Mohaddam was the guy who was leading the team. And this was like a really unusual rocket effort because it wasn't. It wasn't a case where you had this large industrial entity.

You actually had a dude who had a bunch of acolytes who followed him around kind of like a cult.

Dave 5:20

Right. And, like, everybody did everything. Well, he had, like, color preferences, too, in which he had all the buildings painted a certain design or color.

Jeffrey 5:28

All the buildings were painted blue because it was his favorite football team in Tehran.

Dave 5:31

It wasn't just blue. It was like an aqua blue or something like that.

Scott 5:35

Is it Sejil blue? Is it that color? No, I didn't even think about that. The Sejil test models were all blue. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. What a weird signature. It was a lighter shade of blue.

Jeffrey 5:44

And all of the buildings at both Bidganah. Which was one site, Bid Gine, however you say it, I can't, sorry, true arms control, long fashion, we can't pronounce anything in a foreign language. And all of the buildings at Chirrut are that same color of blue. And one of the things Fabian discovered is that Like this was like a thing, like it was a deliberate thing he did, and the other Iranian officials would joke about it.

You know, like they would come to the site and be like, I see you've painted everything blue again, right? And that was a distinct signature.

Scott 6:18

What a curious, like, opposite choice. He was a weird dude. Now you say wise.

Jeffrey 6:23

Yeah, so, so the Sagel stopped testing in 2011 because neither Mohaddam or his entire team, any of them, are with us anymore. They were very close to completing, according to the historical interviews that Fabian found, a large diameter, solid fueled motor.

Dave 6:48

I think Fabian said the diameter was close to three meters, which is. Geez. Yeah.

Jeffrey 6:54

Well, so there was an interview with a with with I think Mohaddam's brother. Right. Who said it was three and a half meters. But Fabian noticed that he like picked up a piece of paper and like read it. And twos and threes look pretty similar in Farsi. And so we assume it was like 2.5 meters, not 3.5.

Scott 7:13

Because a 2.5 makes a lot more sense as a jump. A 3.5 is an enormous pour. That's a big jump to make.

Jeffrey 7:18

But their model was India's PSLV, which we'll get to why. But this was a large diameter motor. And a lot of people say, skipping ahead to such a large diameter motor would be... It's a big deal. Technically reckless.

Dave 7:34

It is very reckless. In fact, that reckless practice of safety and whatnot might have led to the death of Mojadam and his entire team. Right.

Jeffrey 7:43

So in 2011, there was an explosion at Big G'day and it killed Mojadam and every single member of his team except for like one person who wasn't there. It was like 30-some rocket scientists.

Scott 7:54

And y'all were telling me off-pot earlier that that led to a signature change at the facilities, if I remember correctly, because that led to...

Dave 8:00

That's right. So, when you work with solid fuel, it's really dangerous, and if you have an explosion, it's a really big explosion. So, often in solid fuel sites around the world, you build these earthen mounds we call them berms, and if there's an explosion at one side, it will contain the explosion, and you put berms down the other buildings to, you know, kind of layer on that safety feature. Now, at Big Guinea there were no berms, so when one building went off, they all went off. And if you see the before and after photos of the explosion, you can, you can really get that point.

But at Sherwood, there are now lots and lots of berms. Really big berms.

Jeffrey 8:35

You know what my favorite detail that Fabian discovered was?

Scott 8:38

What?

Jeffrey 8:40

They never recovered Mohaddam's head. Oh, jeez. They had to bury him without his head. Gruesome detail, jeez.

Dave 8:48

So the question is, where is his head?

Jeffrey 8:51

I'm imagining if you filmed a documentary, it would be like a Breaking Bad, like those interstitial scenes with tumbleweeds, but his head would roll by. The entire season is off. It actually gave me an opportunity to repurpose a joke that when I was a child, we used to tell about the Challenger.

Dave 9:06

Oh, God. Oh, no. I'm not letting that.

Scott 9:09

That's not...

Jeffrey 9:09

Not bad.

Dave 9:10

No, hard cut.

Scott 9:14

The listeners will never know if you didn't tell it or if I censored it.

Jeffrey 9:26

It's got some convulsions.

Dave 9:29

You should let that joke go and then beep it out. Just beep out the entire joke and then keep the whole thing glowing so people will be wondering. It's just going to be us going, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. What is wrong with you?

Jeffrey 9:43

Yeah, anyway, yes. They never found his head. There's actually a picture. You know, he was quite close to the Supreme Leader. Right. And there's actually a picture.

Scott 9:50

Hopefully not at the time, though.

Jeffrey 9:52

Well, but there's a picture of the Supreme Leader walking among all the, they don't really look like caskets. They look like boxes with the remains of all the scientists. So that slowed the program down for a little bit.

Scott 10:04

Which is, we see a mirror to the Soviet program in the early Soviet ICBM stages, if I remember correctly. The Nebelin disaster led to a similar industrial setback when you had too many scientists on pad for, I believe it was an ICBM test launch. Yeah. I can't remember which one.

Jeffrey 10:19

Yeah. I don't remember what it was. But I know Nidalen. It was the same. I cannot pronounce words. Neither can I. So. If we could get Sarah in here. She speaks Russian.

Scott 10:28

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:29

We could get Yelena in here. She is Russian.

Scott 10:31

Y'all have a number of opportunities over here. We decided instead to put the three people who can't pronounce any of the words we're talking about in the same room.

Jeffrey 10:37

Yeah, well.

Scott 10:39

So, you know, I think it's...

Jeffrey 10:43

I mean, the stuff Fabian found... I mean, what is so interesting to me is we always... We knew that there had been this explosion. And we knew that there was this site called Chirrut. But we weren't able to reconstruct the technical trajectory of the program up to the explosion. And once Fabian did that, we were able to understand what the impetus for the solid rocket effort was, how it changed over time, Where it stopped or paused, and then we were able to see it resume because we now understood what Shahrud was for.

So, you know, it was really, at least for me, it was a fun experience of Fabian's historical work in Farsi Plus our work with satellite images from our friends at Planet and Airbus, and you sort of put it all together, and suddenly a bunch of things that had been mysteries now had plausible answers.

Scott 11:46

Do you want to run through what those historical, so you mentioned the historical trajectory.

Jeffrey 11:49

We should do a podcast on that where you ask questions that help us walk through that history.

Scott 11:54

We'll mark that down then because impetus and changing impetus for an industrial trajectory is something we tend to like on pod. Yeah, I know. But that does get us a little off target, which is once again. Y'all had a big thing for Chirrut. I feel like we've buried the lead a little bit.

Jeffrey 12:08

Well, no, I mean, so, but here's the, actually, no, we should talk about this because the impetus for the program is important because it, the question is what the hell was Chirrut? Yes. Right. And early on, there were discussions that said, well, there's no fuel tanks on site. And the thought was, well, it's, if there are no fuel tanks on site, then maybe it's for solid fuel rockets.

And that would suggest it's for missiles, not for space launch. But we now have a more, I think, sophisticated understanding, which is that Mohaddam just wanted to do big, solid-fueled rockets. And I think, you know, Fabian's judgment, and I agree with him, I don't know what you think, Dave, is that he wanted an ICBM.

Dave 12:51

Right, but the leaders wouldn't allow an ICBM, so he carried on with the largest solid-fueled rocket that he could possibly build, which was a Space Launch Vehicle.

Jeffrey 13:00

Right, so the Supreme Leader imposed this 2,000-kilometer range limit on Iran's missile efforts sometime around 2009. It's actually a little hard to nail down the exact date. But Mogadam was very close to him, and so he was sort of allowed to continue, but he had to recast the effort as a space launch program.

Dave 13:21

Which was great, because Fabian, looking at the propaganda with Mogadam... Saw him with a scientific jacket on, like a science jacket, like a white lab jacket. You know, a science jacket. A science jacket. A lab coat. For science people. What time is it now?

Jeffrey 13:38

It's a science-talking guy with a coat. Hey, I'm from Chicago.

Dave 13:42

You got the smart brains over there. There was a little picture of a space launch vehicle on it.

Jeffrey 13:48

Yeah, so Fabian really fell in love with these little details because the logo for the effort, as depicted on his lab coat, was a space launch vehicle. And his ID card had what looked like a picture of a rocket stage, although it had been blurred out. And in the interviews with survivors, We actually learn... Well, they're not...

Sorry, surviving family members.

Dave 14:17

Family members of survivors, which kind of raises a bit of a question as to how accurate the information is, because if I ask my mom what I do, she still doesn't quite know.

Jeffrey 14:25

I'm going to apply that rule to... Well, okay, so there were different kinds of interviews. There were interviews with surviving family members, which were useful when, like... Those were useful for timelines because sometimes the scientists would be like, I'm sorry I haven't been home for three months. I'm sorry I haven't seen the kids. But we expect testing to be done by this month.

That's useful because that's an OPSEC breach That's, you know, made because you don't want to get a divorce or, you know, just sleep on the couch. But in addition to that, there was an interview, there were a series of interviews with a scientist who was a consultant to the program.

Dave 14:59

Right, and other military officials.

Jeffrey 15:02

And military officials and also Mohedem's brother, who's a weird dude and complicated dude. He's Mohedem's brother, so what do you... But he also had, like, written notes and things that he was working off of. So, you know... You've got to put it all together. And I think the cool thing we did was we compared it to the satellite images that we had.

So you could kind of confirm things. But the big takeaway was when the Supreme Leader said 2,000 kilometer range limit, they had to reinvent this as a space program And even then, in the interviews, people were complaining that the program had been slowed and that the program had all these artificial constraints placed on it. And I think one of the questions we always had was, what the hell was the Sagel?

Scott 15:49

Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:50

Because it makes no sense. And I think the answer is the Sagel was a range-compliant, solid-fueled rocket. And so sometimes people say, oh, well, maybe the Iranians will deploy that. Like, why did they stop testing in 2011 and why did they never deploy it?

Dave 16:03

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 16:05

Fabian's judgment, which I tend to agree with, is it was a test bed. That it was the biggest thing they could fly without running into... Violating the self-imposed limit. And eventually they were going to push for a test of the space launch vehicle, but that was like a fight that they had yet to fight. And so for them, the Sejal was an easy thing to test, which would explain why they were doing it up to 2011.

And then when Mogadam dies, it just disappears. It's not a thing that the military was demanding a two-stage solid-fueled MRBM. It's that Mogadam wanted to build a giant solid-fueled rocket, and the thing that he could get away with flying was the Sejal. And I think the enthusiasm for the Sejal died with him.

Dave 16:50

Right. And the whole research team and program, too, which is really interesting because now we're seeing a lot of work being put back into Sherwood to further complete the site. So I'm guessing what after how many years they've rebuilt the solid fuel expertise.

Scott 17:05

So that takes us up to 2011. Mo Adam dies. The enthusiasm dies with him because a number of the industrial people who could have taken his place die. But we're still looking at this as a program. So what happens post-2011? Why is there a trajectory and sort of where do they go after this?

Jeffrey 17:22

Yeah, I think one of the missing pieces that people don't understand is when he died, the Iranians were in the process of moving testing from Bidjaneh, which blew up.

Dave 17:37

To Shirud. So, actually, this is a good question. I kind of want to pick your brain on. Is, were they moving everything to Shirud, or Shirud an additional site where Bidganai would still be used for other? My guess is they were going to have two sites, okay? But it seems like all the big work was going to go towards Shirud. They definitely were building larger structures for larger engines at Shirud, of course, right? And we now know that those structures were being built.

Jeffrey 18:05

When Mohaddam was alive, But the world doesn't realize this site exists until 2013 when Janes publishes it. Sharud being this site.

Scott 18:16

We knew about VidGanay at that time, but Sharud we don't know about until 2013. But it does exist prior to 2013.

Jeffrey 18:23

And so people see Sharud in 2013 and they're like, oh, what is this thing? And we don't know because we don't have the historical piece. It's not until Fabian comes along and Fabian's able to connect them and say... Charude was the next step for the solid-fueled effort that crashed in 2011. And that's why they built the thing into... You know, it was mostly built out in 2013 so you could see it, but then nothing happened there.

And it's like, well, why is nothing happening there? It's because everybody's f***ing dead! And it takes them a while to relearn and retrain and replace. And then we see... That in the past few years now work at Sharood has picked up.

Scott 19:12

So they've trained sort of next generation as kind of people are sort of coming online.

Jeffrey 19:16

I mean, that's the conclusion I reached, Dave, is that they have now successfully reconstituted this program because the stuff that was happening at VidGene is now happening at Sharood.

Dave 19:26

Yeah, that's right. Now that we know about Charude and its function, if we go back and look at the archival satellite imagery, we can see the site expands a little bit at a time. But sometime around, what, 15, it starts to expand a little bit more. And then 2016, we had our first solid fuel test there. And then 17, the site almost doubles in the number of buildings.

And then they do another solid fuel engine test there. And that seems to be very active now. In fact, we might want to make a... Point about bringing Airbus in. We can use synthetic aperture radar to track minute changes in the terrain, which show human habitation, people walking around, vehicles moving across the site, and using the synthetic aperture radar from Airbus, we can see tons of activity happening around the test stand facility.

Jeffrey 20:12

One of the things I love about this case is it shows the value of historical language research Right? Because you don't know what Sharud is unless you understand who Mochadam is. Like, you don't... It's just this weird freaking site in the desert. But once you realize who he is and you see the box with Sharud written on it and you can...

There was historical stuff saying they were constructing a new site. Like, suddenly it unlocks. You said box. Oh, yeah.

Scott 20:39

That's jumping ahead. We haven't talked about the box yet.

Dave 20:42

I don't know what the Sherwood box is. What's in the box, Jeffrey?

Scott 20:45

What's in the box?

Dave 20:46

What's in the box? His head.

Jeffrey 20:48

No, I'm kidding. The reason that we know that Sherwood was connected to the solid-fueled effort were a series of things. One is that we knew they were constructing a new site from the historical interviews. Now, where is that site? Well, Sherwood's a good candidate. And when you look at the site, it's got the blue buildings. And it has structures at the site that are duplicative of the things we saw at Bid G'dan.

Like it has the same kind of test stands. It's got the same kind of assembly building. Pits and things like that. There are either casting or curing pits. I mean, it looks the same. And then to top it off, there's a terrible OPSEC breach where he is sitting, Mohaddam is sitting next to an Iranian official and there's like a box behind them and Shahrud is written on the box.

And so, you know, suddenly this enigmatic site is no longer enigmatic. It's like, oh, Mohaddam was building a new site. We knew that. That site was shrewd. Of course it is. Look at it. And so that allows us to then monitor that site. And we can watch them reconstitute the solid fuel program as that site builds out again.

Like you can see the aftermath where they're all dead and not much happens. And then you can watch activity there pick up. And this, I think we should talk about both of them. The advantage that we had over other people who had monitored the site Is we had Planet and we had Airbus. And Fabian. Well, I mean, Fabian got us there.

Right. But once someone tells you, hey, this site's important, if you're just using traditional high-resolution optical imagery, you have to spend a ton of money To go visit the site every couple of months, only to discover not much has changed. But because we had the relationship with Planet, we're able to look at daily images, and we saw the moment that they started resurfacing stuff, we saw the moment that they started building new buildings.

And so I don't know about you, but I found that even for the moderate resolution three meter images,

Dave 23:09

Daily coverage alerted us to when this site started to pick up. Right? No, that's the perfect thing with the Dove imagery from Planet is that you might not be able to see smaller details, but you can get macro observations. And when you're looking at a facility expanding or a missile test facility where there's a lot of loose soil, you can really see the change in a site from one day to another. I mean, and I, the one that I remember first was they just repaved all the roads, that, and the tower moving.

Jeffrey 23:39

Yeah, that's right. That's another important thing, which is it didn't look like there was any activity at the site, but the launch tower was moving back and forth. Well, we'll talk about whether that's a launch tower or not. And so that was one set of signatures. But then we have our partnership with Airbus, which gave us really cool radar images, which are absurdly expensive.

I thought you might want to say a word or two about it.

Dave 24:04

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, so Airbus has this type of satellite imagery called synthetic aperture radar. It's like satellite imagery, but without light. It uses radar, like in the name. And it's really accurate, and you can see minute changes in the shifting of soil and dirt and things like that. So if we're monitoring a site like this, this is great because you might not be able to see vehicle traffic or foot traffic Using a traditional optical satellite image, but using synthetic aperture radar, you can see the exact changes in the terrain around the facility. So, not only can you see that the site is active or not active when you compare two points in satellite images, but you can see where the activity is happening. So, while we may see and identify a site having a certain purpose, we may not know if people are actually going to that site unless you use synthetic aperture radar.

Jeffrey 24:55

So what I love is you can see the cars or the vehicles driving in and out of the underground facility in the crater where the static engine tests are. So you can see that there's a tunnel there, but it's like, well, is there anything in the tunnel? And the answer is yes, because I can see the cars going.

I can't see the cars, but I can see their tracks going in and out.

Scott 25:13

Well, this has been like a historic problem for other sites when we look at, you know, tunnels or buildings of unknown use or buildings of... Dubious repute when we have to deal with a single high resolution image and we have to figure out what the change over time is from one. This is much better.

Dave 25:27

So what Jeffrey's not telling you is that his favorite use case for using synthetic aperture radar is looking at how they built a series of pipelines going from one So they built a fence around certain segments and in order to complete the pipeline, they had to go all the way back around outside the facility and then pick back up where they started because that's how you would build it.

But Jeffrey found the, I guess, annoyance of that construction problem very amusing.

Jeffrey 25:50

Well, I mean, like it makes sense, right? You don't, you wouldn't dig under a fence. You would dig up to the fence and then maybe do a little digging under, but then you'd go back out the gate and come around. Exactly. But you can see the tracks of the vehicles all coming around to then pick up the trench, which then extends to a facility that some people were not sure was part of the site.

Right. But we can now see it's connected. And then, you know, going back to how much we love Fabian, it's weird because it's got a vegetable garden. And it's like, why are they connecting the vegetable garden? But Mohaddam loved gardening. And that was the thing he did for his staff to relax them. Was like have them garden and from the PLA he's a weird dude was a weird dude so but I mean like it's this wonderful marriage of things where like there are this this clump of buildings that we think were part of the site But it's got a garden, so it doesn't really look like it's part of the site, but you know that he likes to garden, and so you're like, oh, is this Mogadam's garden or not?

And then when they connect the building using the trench, and you can see the vehicles, you're like, yes, because of the traffic at this site, this distant facility is still part of the main facility. I... Love that.

Dave 27:05

It also has a large water basin, too, which is probably why they're building piping going out there for reference. So it's not just a pipe leading to a garden.

Jeffrey 27:11

Yeah, I mean, there's a building, and we have a vigorous debate about what that building is. Yeah, Dave's laughing in pain. No one agrees with me, and it's probably because I'm wrong, but we're discussing it. You know, the other case I like, one of the reasons people thought the site was not active is it's very hard to see the electricity poles.

Dave 27:33

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 27:34

Like there are electricity poles running electricity into the canyon or that crater where the test stands are, but you can't see them just because the ground is uneven and so it's hard to see. But in SAR, when the table sways, It shows up as a gorgeous rainbow in your picture. So you can actually see these rainbows, right, which is actually the swaying electrical lines on poles running into the crater.

And so someone was like, I don't see any electricity running into this crater, which is, of course you don't, because they're hard to see, but I can see it in SAR. Here's a beautiful rainbow.

Dave 28:18

Here's another interesting feature about Sharood, is that they have underground, short of the engine test facility, which is in this Bond-like villain mountain crater.

Jeffrey 28:27

We just have to say how awesome this is, that there is a freaking crater. So the facility is outside, but the engine test stands are in a crater. Like a burnt out, was it like a volcano a thousand years ago or something?

Dave 28:42

And there's also an underground complex in the ridges of that crater just to reinforce that everything everywhere is underground. But they've connected all the buildings at the central facility with underground tunnels and they just finished the construction of the entry point for that. So it'll be kind of interesting using SARS, a node I don't think we've talked about yet, to see when activity on the ground outside of the central complex dies off.

Right. Because now they're using the underground tunnels, and that would be maybe an indicator that the site is closer to completion than...

Scott 29:11

That is very James Bond-y. That reminds me of some of the Egyptian sites that are in cliffs and whatnot.

Jeffrey 29:15

Oh, we got to talk. That's another podcast.

Scott 29:18

Yeah, that's a different podcast. We have a different cast of hosts for that one.

Jeffrey 29:21

No, but that's an incredible story because you don't know what those caves are and I will tell you and you will f*** yourself.

Scott 29:26

He will be like, no way! And I'll be like, yes, fucking way. So that gives us our post-2011 trajectory. We have reconstitution of the program. We have analysis in-house of SAR and whatnot, looking into basically the site as it sort of expands and reactivates. So, I guess the next question is, let's do a profile on Sharut. So, how big is Sharut?

How big did it get? What was the change over time? Why do we care about Sharut? Besides that we have these indicators that cool stuff's going down.

Dave 29:58

So, Iran had a modest budding self-fuel test and production capability going up to the death of Moghdam with the explosion of Big Ghanan in 2011. From that, we got the Sejl, which was Iran's first medium-range solid-fuel ballistic missile. Charoud is... How many times bigger is Charoud? It's huge.

Jeffrey 30:22

Well, you know, to me, what's so interesting is not just that it's physically large... But the test stands. But the test stands are big.

Dave 30:30

I'm going to get that, too. But you can kind of get a ballpark estimate for the size of a solid-fuel motor that you're going to test by looking at the size of the test stand. So for smaller... Maybe artillery rockets, you're going to take a small concrete block, throw some rails on there and just light it and see what happens.

If you're going to test something larger, you need a larger test stand because you have to counteract all the force going horizontally. Now, at Shahrud, we have the largest solid fuel test stands that are anywhere in Iran that we know of, and we haven't seen them tested yet.

Jeffrey 31:01

Right. So the question was, how big is the f***ing missile?

Dave 31:04

Right.

Jeffrey 31:04

Right. And we had the idea that it was a big f***ing missile because the brother of Mogadam said it was 3.5 meters in diameter, which we think was a mistake. But even if it's 2.5, that's still big.

Scott 31:17

And this is the missile that has not existed yet.

Jeffrey 31:19

Right.

Scott 31:19

This is the hypothetical slash...

Jeffrey 31:21

Right, because the question is like, what the hell are they doing at Chirrut? Are they making tiny little artillery rockets? And we know when Mohaddam died, his goal was a big f***ing missile. And his brother told us how big. And, you know, you look at the casting or curing pits, the circular pits in the ground where the motor segments are made, it, you know, looks like you're looking at, you know, two, three meters.

So this is a big, big, big rocket. So one of the questions we had was, well, like how big is the test stands? And people wanted us to do a plume analysis to look at the burn scar, but it turns out that that's too sensitive.

Dave 32:02

It depends on a bunch of different variables, including soil type and whatnot. And another question that comes up is once you've tested at a test stand, you get this kind of ground scarring or this fingerprint that a test had occurred. That doesn't go away. It takes a long time for that soil to return to the same color of the surrounding soil. So, they could be doing multiple tests or testing build on another one. And, yeah, but what we, what we determined was, since most of the tests are done horizontally.

Jeffrey 32:29

Fabian measured the dimensions of the concrete block and estimated the mass of the concrete block. And there's a nice rule of thumb that the concrete block needs to be four to six times as massive as the thrust of the engine. Now, that's not a perfect, you know, it's a rule of thumb. And some of these things are built into the side of the crater so that Earth provides additional support.

But, you know, if you're an engineer... How big is the concrete block? Well, you know, you pick your number. And what I kind of loved about his analysis was we estimated the mass of one block and we had a video. This was for a smaller engine, but we had a video of a smaller engine being fired on it.

And so we estimated the mass, the thrust of the engine based on the mass of the block. And then we independently estimated what kind of engine we thought it was and sent Ferenc Dalnaki-Varisch off to estimate the thrust without showing him the mass of the block. Right. So just using its range payload and Ferenc's number matched ours perfectly.

And then because we're freaking paranoid, we send Ferenc's calculations to David Wright at UCS without telling him what they were for and made him redo Ferenc's calculations. And David agreed. So it turns out, I think it's four times.

Dave 33:49

Yeah. Block size analysis.

Jeffrey 33:50

The Iranians basically follow the four-time rule, and if you do that, you're looking at the engine blocks that are at Shahrud are for engines up to 100 tons of thrust, which is a big missile.

Scott 34:06

For the North Korea listeners, I believe we can use 80 tons of thrust as a particular marker for size.

Jeffrey 34:12

We debate between 80 and 96. Which are both still... But this is a big effing missile. Under 100.

Scott 34:18

And those would be for their big liquid space launch, the quote-unquote geosync one. Right. This would be a big...

Jeffrey 34:24

So these are giant solid fuel motors, which... Could be for an ICBM, although, you know, it seems like that the entire program had to be reoriented to space launch because of the Supreme Leader's 2,000 kilometer range directive. So what does this all mean? Well, look, I don't know, Dave, how you feel, but, you know, one of the consistent complaints about the...

Can we call it the late JCPOA? I guess it's still alive. They lied though. Right, so this is the fundamental debate, right? Some people say, see, they had a missile program. But I take a different view, which is people complain... That the Iranians are building missiles with kind of no constraint on them. But in fact, looking at the totality of the evidence, the reality is that the Supreme Leader's 2,000 kilometer range restriction was a restriction on this program.

And it was something that the people in the interviews complained about. Like, they're angry about it. And they were not happy that it had to be a space launch program. And they were not happy that the resulting missile, although it was massive, you know, it's like India's PSLV. It's massive, but it's actually too big to be a good ICBM.

When India actually built its ICBM, it made a smaller version of the PSLV that could be carried around on a truck. So the people who worked on this program were actually pissed about the constraints they were laboring under. And my feeling is we did not appreciate those constraints. All we did was just look at this site, not we, but I mean, as a community, we just looked at Iran's missile efforts and we were like, well, it's not zero, so it's bad.

But actually it was good, you know, like it was much better when they were restricted to space launch and now they may not be.

Scott 36:16

So the idea basically being that based on the evidence y'all are pulling out, Iran at essentially the nation state level self-restrained on ICBMs and kind of sluiced that technology and expertise into space launch vehicle tech. I think now may not have the pressure to actually keep that on, depending on how one interprets how things are going.

Jeffrey 36:37

I think so. You know, what was holding the Iranians back was not lack of capability. Right. They could have built, I think, a solid fueled ICBM. They were very close to being able to build one in 2011. They have now reconstituted that program. They may come back and do it again. And so it was not their lack of skill that was restraining them.

It was the political environment. And we have now changed that political environment in a way that we may really regret. Because when, you know, whoever has replaced Tehran, Tehrani Mohaddam, you know, with his head intact, comes to the Supreme Leader...

Scott 37:16

Those references are going to be real hard for the listeners to follow after I censor that joke very heavily.

Dave 37:21

We're going to censor you too.

Jeffrey 37:22

Perfect.

Dave 37:23

Right.

Jeffrey 37:24

But you know, when that, when that guy comes back and then, you know, it'll be a dude and says to the Supreme leader, like, well, we, you know, why are we restraining ourselves? Shouldn't we have the same capabilities that the United States has? And shouldn't we have the ability to strike the United States? If he says yes, you know, that National Academies report with the solid field Iranian ICBM is going to look more prescient.

Dave 37:47

And we're going to know when this happens when we check Planet one morning and realize that the large test stand has been fired.

Jeffrey 37:53

Yeah, that's right. We're going to see a giant frickin' burn scar. A huge-ass burn scar. And it's going to be like, fuck you, face on clown stick, and walking away from the JCPOA. Because now we've got to defend against an Iranian solid-fueled ICBM, which, for all we know, is going to end up in North Korea. That's right.

I don't know. I mean, do you feel differently?

Dave 38:14

No, I feel the exact same way. I mean, there's a lot to comprehend with this, right? Because you're always looking at this in the context of Iran's nuclear program and all the events that kind of led up to Trump pulling out of the JCPOA and the Iran lied presentation, which was truly a gem for Photoshop, if anyone's seen that.

Scott 38:35

Oh, yes, it's very important for lightning in the evenings.

Dave 38:39

It's great. But, I mean, ultimately, Ron's missile program was self-restrained, and we've only seen them kind of venture into the liquid fuel program, not because they technically couldn't, but because they, well, hadn't. They had to rebuild everything. But they have the location to do it. I don't know.

Scott 38:56

Great job, Scott. Yeah, I'm trying to cancel out sound, and I just made it louder.

Dave 39:00

Yeah, I don't know. What Jeffrey said, sure.

Scott 39:04

I think an interesting point on this, so I'm always on the industrial and bureaucratic pressures end, and I personally just find the potential number of reconstituting a program takes less than seven years, and the reconstituting a program for weaponization kind of taking three to four years, and then being politically Suppressed so that it takes seven to eight years.

Jeffrey 39:25

Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, we don't understand the bureaucratic component of reconstitution yet. I mean, one of the interesting things that Fabian found was that Mohaddam ran his program like a cult, and it was based entirely on his personal relationship with hominy. Sorry. Hominy. I can't say it. I make it sound like hominy and grits.

Scott 39:46

Now I'm hungry again.

Jeffrey 39:47

Yeah. You're from the South. Hominy, grits. You're like, oh, no. Give me some of that. Yeah.

Scott 39:53

I gotta get me some of that. Harmony and Grit sounds like it's the supreme leader complaining about sand.

Dave 39:58

Yeah, well, there's some of that. It gets everywhere.

Jeffrey 40:00

I mean, we don't know... It's probably not likely that Mohaddam got replaced by another charismatic lunatic. It probably got rolled back into Iran's larger bureaucracy. A lot of whom Fabian found did not like Mohaddam.

Dave 40:22

They didn't appreciate his independence. Competing industries as well. If we look at the Pakistan example, the battle between liquid fuel and solid fuel and how solid fuel won at the end of the day is probably going to

Jeffrey 40:34

Throw some time into the reconstitution of their solid fuel program, because, you know, since 2011, the liquid fuel industry has been unopposed, right? Yeah, so we don't really know if it rolled back to like Shaheed Baghari Industries, which traditionally does the shorter range solid fuel, whether they've taken it over, or whether it's still the Jihad Self-Sufficiency Organization, or it's my favorite, that's my favorite one, I mean, that we don't, such a good name, it's Jihad Juche.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't know. Right. But the thing is, it does. So but I mean, from my perspective, what's cool about open source is we can't tell bureaucratically What has happened to reconstitute the program, but we can see the burn scars that show that the program has been reconstituted, so we know it's a question to ask, right?

And we can now dig on that problem, particularly if we can get Fabian back. Right, yeah. We love you, Fabian! Come back! Come back to us! Anyway, so that's what Dave and I did on our spring vacation.

Dave 41:39

What's spring vacation, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey 41:40

Yeah, it's when I give Dave work that he doesn't get paid for.

Scott 41:44

How did the headline for the New York Times article, why was it not just, why you gotta be shrewd? That's brilliant. Where were you? You dropped the ball. I'm indecent. It's not like y'all sent everything for me for copy editing.

Dave 41:59

You should just know.

Scott 42:00

Well, it's not like you're volunteering to help out. Oh, it's been very difficult to get missile Twitter lyrics out of me typically in the past.

Jeffrey 42:09

Yeah. So I don't know. It was a cool project. I mean, to me, again, I've said this already, but what I loved about it was that it combined a thing that Middlebury is traditionally good for, which is research in native language. And it took the OSINT stuff we do with satellites and it fit them together. And you really couldn't, like we had had satellite pictures of Shahrud before, but we were all like, well, I don't know what the this thing is.

And so the language answers that. And then once that happens, suddenly our ability to interpret the satellite pictures is much stronger.

Scott 42:46

It's the difference between imagery analysis and all source analysis. It's bringing a holistic view into things and fleshing each of the things weakness out with the other strength.

Dave 42:54

And we got to use SAR, which is amazing. It's like Predator Vision, except for satellites.

Jeffrey 42:59

And we got to buy Fabian drinks, which was also good, because it was great to have Fabian here for a semester. Man, if you're as good as Fabian, just show up on our doorstep. We'll find you a desk.

Dave 43:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffrey 43:12

So I don't know. That's what we did. How are things on the Slack channel, Scott? I just dropped in a little bit. I've been preoccupied with my book that is no longer a secret.

Scott 43:20

Oh, that's right. That's no longer a secret project. The Slack channel is doing great. I have actually been woefully absent for a little bit as I have been traveling. And I'm sort of catching up on that. But every time I look in, it seems to be doing well. And if you would like to support... Our research, continuing OSINT attempts, and more discoveries of the favorite colors of rocket scientists in adversarial states, you should head over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

If you kick us $5 a month, or $3 a month if you are a student, you too can join the Slack channel. And if you do the large amount of $30 per month, that's where we do the blast equations. Calligraphy art piece that adorns a number of people's windows in a number of places. Jeffrey is pointing. You have a unique one though, Jeffrey.

Yours is irreplaceable. So again, that's patreon.com slash acwpodcast and we hope to see you in the Slack channel.

Dave 44:16

Don't forget your science jacket. Science talking guy.

Scott 44:20

Thanks for having me out in Monterey for a family pod.

Jeffrey 44:23

Alright, enjoy your burrito for lunch. Thank you. You didn't eat that yet? No. I didn't buy one. It's not like I'm sending them to me. Thank you for listening.