New Year, New START, New Facilities in Iran

Aaron Stein 0:01

So now I'm actually titillated.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:07

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron 0:24

And I am Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. How the hell you doing, Aaron? I'm okay. How are you? You're on the East Coast now.

Jeffrey 0:39

Yeah, we're here for the holidays, spending some time with the in-laws, just hanging out. It's snowy.

Aaron 0:48

We have snow. I had to shovel my driveway, which was always a very lovely holiday tradition around here of me sort of hurting my back for a good six weeks just into the holiday season of lifting and Lifting and cleaning and all that stuff. So yeah, holiday cheer around here all around.

Jeffrey 1:06

I'll admit I kind of like it. It's still new enough for me that it is a change of pace. You know, the kids are like psyched to go sledding in the snow rather than riding boogie boards down sand dunes.

Aaron 1:23

Yeah, boogie boards down sand dunes reminds me of what I used to do, and so that one sounds better for me than snow, because the attire is a lot easier to put on, especially with young children.

Jeffrey 1:33

Oh my god, snow pants.

Aaron 1:37

It's an ordeal to get out the door, and there's so much of it that somehow it always piles up in my entryway, but somehow I don't think our listeners want to hear about this, but you know, it's just nice to catch up, because we've both been sort of It's just been a really busy year with the pandemic.

It's been hard to find time to podcast. Oh, my God. 2020 sucked. I was thinking back sort of nostalgically at the beginning of this. And perhaps it's naivete. It's like, yeah, we're going to do more. We're going to give more content. We're going to make sure that our listeners have stuff to do. And then as we go through this, I'm like, well, I can't get the time.

I have kids running around. I have to do stuff. Oh, my God. I can't make this work. So those plans went up in smoke.

Jeffrey 2:19

Yeah, yeah, they did. But, I mean, with Anne's departure to Bigger and Better Things, she's now, you know, she's now at Planet. This is an opportunity for us to reboot the podcast. Yeah. And... I don't know what's going to come next. I don't know where this is going to go. But I think the foreseeable future having to be like the old days where it's just you and me just kind of shooting the breeze is that's going to be nice.

I'm going to enjoy that.

Aaron 2:50

It'll be fun. It's sort of taking it old school. You know, we've. This podcast, it's been around for a while. I sometimes go back and find some of our old podcasts to re-listen to when I have to do some work on arms control, disarmament, or nonproliferation. And my eyes always pop out of my head when I'm like, whoa, we have podcasts up on the website from going back to 2014 and probably earlier.

So it's been a while.

Jeffrey 3:15

It really has. Two producers ago.

Aaron 3:21

I was the original producer, but we pretend that never existed.

Jeffrey 3:27

So what we have decided to do is... Today we're going to talk about the construction that we have seen at Natanz, principally relating to what we believe is a new facility for assembling centrifuges. But before we do that, we wanted to talk about the different things we've been working on, really to put a bunch of things on the table, because there are one, two, three, four, five, six, at least seven things that I want to podcast about in the coming month or two, which we probably aren't going to get to them all.

And if you are a listener in the Slack channel, this is your opportunity to weigh in and what should we cover. So, Aaron, I am just going to like pop down the list.

Aaron 4:15

Yeah, we made it off mic. So you can just go right down. I saw you taking notes.

Jeffrey 4:20

And if you want to hop in and editorialize about what you think would make a strong or weak episode or why we might do one thing or another, I'm all ears. I am totally willing to do that. So one thing we should one thing we're probably definitely something I want to talk about is Russia's tests of anti-satellite weapons, including the recent test on was it like the 16th, 15th or 16th of December of the noodle?

Aaron 4:50

Yeah. So that would be a follow on or perhaps just sort of a different variation of a podcast we've done on the noodle before. And that's something I definitely want to do as well, because when that popped across my feed, I was like, that's something we need to talk about.

Jeffrey 5:03

Yeah. From my perspective, the real reason I'm motivated to do that is I did so much space work 15 years ago when I was in my graduate program. As you did. And I feel like all of the things that my colleagues and I were saying 15 years ago were going to happen where, you know, a lot of military officials, including then I think he was Colonel Hyten before he was vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, used to come to our meetings and like, you know, like pat us on the head and tell us it was all going to be fine.

Like that shit has all happened now. Yeah.

Aaron 5:38

Yeah, it's getting – yeah, no, no, definitely. And some of the stuff that we were talking about is all coming true, and it's certainly worth talking about moving forward.

Jeffrey 5:48

So The Noodle, that's one podcast. We might talk about the regional conflict involving Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Tigray forces because launch a missile, get a pod.

Aaron 6:05

There's been a lot of missile launches since we've podded, and it's sort of in the arms control tradition of there's a lot more missiles out there than people really think about.

Jeffrey 6:14

Yes, that's one that we'll get to in one second. I am not sure we'll end up doing Ethiopia because it's not clear to me what the Tigray forces launched. It might just be a Chinese artillery rocket. But there is some interesting stuff there. A lot of Ethiopia, North Korea cooperation. And I've been kind of I've been snooping on North Korean arms factories in Ethiopia.

So that's, that's on the list.

Aaron 6:41

It's another contender for the Arms Control Food Truck Fusion Award of 2021. Ethiopian and North Korean. Right?

Jeffrey 6:50

That'd be pretty good. I miss Ethiopian food so much.

Aaron 6:56

I know. And we had the proposed food truck of North Korean and Iranian food for their solid fuel missile programs.

Jeffrey 7:04

I'm just imagining a little Ethiopian bulgogi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron 7:09

Yeah. I'm making it with my fingers. The spongy bread. This is some energy, right? Yeah. Well, look, don't ask me.

Jeffrey 7:18

I mean, it's the Arms Control Wong podcast, so certainly we're going to say it wrong.

Aaron 7:21

It's the spongy bread that I order. And I'm like, so that spongy bread type thingy with the spicy stuff. I like that when I talk to the waiter or waitress.

Jeffrey 7:29

Yeah, I don't know that we'll get around to talking about Armenia and Azerbaijan. There was a Laura used and there were reports that there was Nisgander used, but I didn't get my damn debris.

Aaron 7:40

No, I didn't see any debris, but I did my own personal podcast on that, on loitering munitions and stuff like that. But yeah, no, I'll go digging for some stuff like that. I know some guy who militantly, feverishly tracks it. So perhaps he has something buried away on his Twitter feed. So maybe let's put a pin in that.

I'll come back to that one.

Jeffrey 8:00

And at some point, we're going to have to talk about New Start, presumably before it expires or gets extended.

Aaron 8:07

That's true. That one should be like a January pod, just as the Biden—well, sort of late January, early February pod as the Biden administration is coming in. That's my thought on that. Because we've done a lot on New Start, if you go in the archives. But it's time. We're coming up against the deadline. It's a short podcast.

Just f***ing extend the thing. Just extend it. Talk. But I think that leads to the potential next podcast that maybe you'll get into in a second on arms control.

Jeffrey 8:37

Well, so we have podcasts presumably on all the stuff I've been doing lately because I've been busy. I've got an article coming out, which is going to be about what the Biden administration's arms control agenda should emphasize. And I don't know if I would. I don't know if I would have ruined it. But let's just say I'm not getting confirmed for anything ever again after this article.

Well, you know, this article is professional suicide in the sense that I think I'm saying a thing that I think is true, but people don't want to hear.

Aaron 9:16

I feel like that's on brand for you, though. Yeah, not the professional suicide, but you just sort of tell it how it is. Let the chips fall.

Jeffrey 9:24

Yeah, so that's, I'll tell you what, that article, I will just say it's about missile defense. And in it, I say that if we fail to extend New START, it will make about as much difference to the arms control era as if the Coliseum were to fall down. Okay. A disappointment to antiquarians and tourists, but really just a monument to a dead era that we have to rebuild.

Aaron 9:56

I feel like there's some sort of joke there to be made about a dead era, but I'm just not going to make it.

Jeffrey 10:02

Let's move on. We at CNS used our fancy missile modeling tools to revisit the Norwegian sounding rocket incident.

Aaron 10:12

That sounds fun, and that's sort of like we've talked. This was back when it was me and Anne about revisiting some historical stuff that was going on at the time, and that would certainly be fun.

Jeffrey 10:25

Yeah, now we're able to really accurately model what the Black Brant looked like to the Russian radar because we can model using AGI's systems toolkit both the radar view and the performance of the missile, and we can then run that against actual, like, a USD-5. So that's kind of cool. We did that. Could you do that with the Alaska Interceptors?

Aaron 10:50

We're going to do that in the spring. Okay. Well, good. That's another podcast. We're pinning that one.

Jeffrey 10:59

And we, David Laboon and I, I think, successfully cracked the composition of the IRBM the United States tested in December 2019 that it doesn't want to talk about. We used all the same tools that we use on Iran and North Korea, but we turned those on the Strategic Capabilities Office and conceptually reverse-engineered their IRBM tests.

Aaron 11:26

That may be a career suicide, too.

Jeffrey 11:28

It's... It's a very old idea that's been updated.

Aaron 11:35

Now I'm actually titillated. Now I want to talk about that rather than the tons, the hole in the ground.

Jeffrey 11:43

And then I think the last thing on my list is we have done a bunch of open source work on Israel's missiles. The Jericho series using open source information from the French who helped design and build the first Jericho ones. But then also using open source information from Israel's space launch program and from South Africa to look at the Jericho two and putative Jericho three.

Aaron 12:11

So we have good stuff from South Africa.

Jeffrey 12:15

There is a lot of good stuff from South Africa. We've also, as a consequence of this, sort of started digging again on the South Africans. But that's it. So my list is Noodle, T-Gray Missile Launch.

Aaron 12:29

What did I leave off? Come on. The arms control. I mean, this is the man who helped propel us into sort of the semi-fame. I'm sitting here looking like a total moron. Our boy, Kim Jong-un.

Jeffrey 12:45

Oh, my God. I did. Yes. We've completed an analysis of the new Hwasong ICBM, which I really should try to publish before they launch the damn thing.

Aaron 12:56

Right. But, well, hopefully you publish.

Jeffrey 12:59

Once they launch it, I'll have more data. So we've got a benchmarking analysis where we measured it and we assessed what the thing in the parade tells us about what they aspire to do. I don't know if they can actually do it yet.

Aaron 13:12

It's not good.

Jeffrey 13:15

I would just say that the fundamental tension in assessing North Korean missiles is do you restrict yourself to what they have shown us or do you allow yourself to anticipate what they're hinting at having next? Because you don't want to become a fear monger. You don't want to exaggerate. But on the other hand, if you only stick to what they've shown us in the past, you're constantly going to be surprised every time they make a step forward.

And so we're trying to balance that and looking at the parade and the engine test they did last December, I think they're hinting that they have a much wider range of technology related to the Cyclone than we have seen so far. So that's, you know, bad.

Aaron 14:08

Well, that's that's the famous long lost arms control walk episode that Scott didn't want us to release. Remember that one? Oh, the FOBS episode. Yeah, maybe we should put that on the Slack channel just to sort of like the B-sides.

Jeffrey 14:22

I mean, the thing is, well, I will only say this about FOBS. I don't think the thing they showed us is a FOBS system, but it is configured in pretty much exactly the same way as the missile that the Soviets eventually used as FOBS. So I don't know how it's not going to cross their mind.

Aaron 14:40

It's like buying a Ferrari and being like,

Jeffrey 14:45

I wonder if I could race this thing. Of course you can race the thing. You might not want to race the thing. You might not choose to race the thing, but it will have occurred to them for sure.

Aaron 14:54

Maybe we should release. Oh God. I don't even know if we still have the fobs up episode somewhere, but anyways.

Jeffrey 15:00

Okay. So I have to recap. We have noodle. Tigray rocket launch. Armenia, Azerbaijan slug fest. New start. Just extend it. Rebuilding the arms control enterprise. What the hell did the U.S. test in December 2019? How close did the world come to a nuclear war with the Norwegian sounding rocket incident? Israel's Jericho series and the new Hwasong Chungus Humongus ICBM.

We can't do them all.

Aaron 15:42

I don't know. This was famous last words, right? Hey, guys, in March, we're going to do more content and then we sort of drop off the earth. But sure, I think we should try. One should aspire for greatness and settle for something less rather than aspire for mediocrity and then overperform.

Jeffrey 15:59

So this is an invitation. If you are a subscriber to our Slack channel, we'll set up a conversation. We want you to come and tell us which of these things really interest you. And we'll do podcasts on them. Yeah, that sounds like fun.

Aaron 16:15

I'm trying to think if there's anything else. That's enough for now. It's a good list. That's a good list. It's a good list. As always, you've been busy.

Jeffrey 16:21

It's a good list, Brent. You've been busy. None of which is Natanz, which was like our big story with Christoph Kirtle in the New York Times with the visual investigations team.

Aaron 16:37

That's right. So why don't you just give the listeners exactly what was going on there and then I'll jump in. Okay.

Jeffrey 16:45

Well, so... This is actually also something I did a talk for Planet using the same images and slides and whatnot. If you recall, and I have the dates in front of me because I can't remember them off the top of my head. In September... Well, for me, actually, the Natanz story starts this summer. Someone blew up the building at Natanz where Iran assembled its centrifuges.

So the components are made elsewhere at other workshops. But those components are then transported to Natanz where they're put together in this facility, and then the assembled centrifuges are taken to the underground enrichment hall where they are installed. Or taken over to the RD.

Aaron 17:35

I'm making motions with my hands, but yes.

Jeffrey 17:38

Right. In the summer, someone blew that building up. Right. And, you know, I know you and I, we've been quite skeptical of the effects of sabotage because, one, it doesn't typically induce that much delay in the program. Right. And at least for me, at like a deeper, more fundamental level, I object to spending political capital on buying time that we don't have a plan to use.

Aaron 18:14

No, yes. The way I always frame it is that if you're using coercion to generate leverage, leverage requires that at some point you compromise.

Jeffrey 18:27

Unless you are an idiot and you believe that leverage is good in and of itself because you just enjoy applying leverage because you are an asshole.

Aaron 18:36

Right, because leverage at some point becomes a liability, right? At some point, your asset becomes a depreciating liability.

Jeffrey 18:43

No, no, no. Then you just turn it up to 11. That's what we got to do. We got to turn the sanctions up to 11, Aaron.

Aaron 18:49

Right.

Jeffrey 18:50

If 10 is not working, we do with 11. And if 11 doesn't work... We get a little button.

Aaron 18:54

This is 12. And I think sabotage of the coercive tools out there is one of the least effective because it buys you the least amount of time.

Jeffrey 19:03

It buys you very little time and it results in things like this, which is in September. Ali Salehi, who, you know, makes an appearance in our podcast, The Deal. Thanks to Richard Stone, who gave us all the tapes of his interviews with Salehi. He basically he comes out in September and says regarding the evil action and sabotage that was carried out.

It has been decided to establish a more modern, vaster and inclusive building to be constructed in the heart of the mountains around Natanz. So we immediately are like looky, looky, looky. And in September, we don't really see anything.

Aaron 19:44

Mm hmm.

Jeffrey 19:45

And then not quite two months later of it, at really the end of October, Rafael Grossi says that the Iranians have informed the IAEA that they have begun constructing an underground facility near Natanz to house a replacement for that building. And lo and behold, and this is kind of the reason we ended up doing this for Planet is it's a really nice case study of tip and cue.

We were able, I think Grossi says it on the 27th of October. On the 26th of October, we have a three-meter image. And a lot of people like to denigrate three-meter images. But in the three-meter image, you can clearly see that there is some ground scarring related to clearing of one area and the construction of some new roads leading into the mountains.

Which I think is interesting because... You know, what I said in the talk is I sometimes read novels about, like, technology or, you know, like, where satellite imagery is available. And people all think that, like, these things exist as, like, a real-time feed. But they don't, right? But what's interesting is people think they do because of stuff like having daily three-meter imagery.

And I think the consequence of that is that the Iranians certainly knew that this construction would be seen. And they therefore were, I think, very prompt in their declaration. They might be digging stuff in other places that they don't think we can see. But in this case, I do think that their forthrightness was driven by the amount of eyeballs on this area.

Aaron 21:37

It's also indicative of how they've handled the maximum pressure strategy, which is that, yes, we will apply our counter leverage, our counter coercion to you, which is skirting the lines or limits within the JCPOA, but Shrouding that within the norms and the rules of how you're supposed to do things. So in here, they're telling the IAEA exactly what you're supposed to do, placing it under safeguards, declaring it to the agency, even if the outcome of this is that the facilities that the Iranians will build will be tunnels inside of a mountain, which makes them obviously very difficult to destroy, which I think is the case, was the original intent and purpose of building the facilities in this way.

Jeffrey 22:22

You know, I think one aspect of this One aspect of the way the Iranians have played this is how legalistic they have been, which is a good thing. I mean, sometimes because they're diplomats can be more competent than some of the people who the Trump administration have allowed to go do this. It's been annoying because they're at an advantage.

You know, competency always is an advantage. But you know, I, one thing that I think has been really poorly reported throughout the whole process of Iran stepping back from its commitments under the JCPOA is that they've been really careful that everything they have done is either within the parameters of the agreement or is reversible if the United States comes back into compliance. And so this is a case where You know, this is this facility is permitted.

Right. No, there's nothing. Iran is allowed to have a certain number of centrifuges. It is allowed to do centrifuge research. It was doing that centrifuge research above ground. And well, at least in this case, it was doing the assembly above ground. And who whoever sabotaged that facility then created the perfect excuse for the Iranians to go put it underground.

Aaron 23:54

Which, again, is not illegal, but it creates a problem even if it is legalistic in its intent.

Jeffrey 24:01

Right. And so the U.S. always has said that there is something suspicious about burying things. And then, of course, the Iranian retort is, well, if you weren't constantly threatening to blow things up, we wouldn't have to bury them. And they really took advantage of this situation where the facility that was above ground has been destroyed. And they're like, OK, geniuses, now we'll put it underground.

How much do you like that? Right. And so, you know, they have, they've informed the IAEA and it's, you know, it's all been, it's all been very, very direct. One, one thing I will say that, you know, was initially a mystery for us is we could see roads going into the mountains and we could see clearing at what used to be a firing range.

And so it wasn't actually clear whether it was going to be a cut and cover facility like the big enrichment halls at Natanz or whether it was going to be tunnels into a mountain. And we got really high resolution images from Maxar that, as far as I can tell, were taken before there was any substantial tunneling. I'm staring at them now.

To me, it's an incredible thing that you can see construction at such an early stage that you can't even assess what it is.

Aaron 25:24

You know, like it's very different than the past where – I was just about to say that. Like I was thinking back to some of our early work back to like 2006. It's like this was never possible back then.

Jeffrey 25:34

Well, if you think about like when Corey Hinderstein was looking for Natanz in 2002 – Are you sure it was Corey? Oh. I'm sorry. Go ahead. That was a joke. Go ahead. I – you know, I –

Aaron 25:54

That's another great podcast that got lost. I'll never forget that podcast.

Jeffrey 25:58

Do you know what I'll say when it comes to including people and not including them? When we interviewed Scott Sagan for the last episode of The Deal, we really felt like having both Scott and his co-author, Ben Valentino, might be too much. Too many different voices. Too many white dudes. And... As we told the story, we realized that Ben's contribution was so central that you couldn't tell the story without including him.

So I'll just observe that if people don't make the cut, that might tell you something about Their contribution, but whatever.

Aaron 26:47

I derailed you. I'm sorry. But I'm simply saying, if you think back to when Corey did all of that work to find the tons.

Jeffrey 26:55

You know, by the time she got the satellite imagery, well, by the time the image was taken and by the time she got it, construction was really far along so that one could look at it and say, oh my God, that's not a fuel fabrication plant. That's an enrichment facility.

Aaron 27:14

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 27:15

And we now live in this era where we find things all the time before we can really properly assess them. And, you know, my my two favorite examples of that one is we had an early detection of one of the Iranian space launches and we took it to some reporters and they're like, no, no, you have to wait for the thing to launch before it's news.

Aaron 27:37

And we're like, no, we can see the future.

Jeffrey 27:39

Like there is going to be a launch. It turns out going to be a launch is not news. A launch was news. And similarly, you know, when we reported that North Korea was going to resume engine testing at Sohae, which we think is probably the first time an NGO has detected a violation of a nonproliferation commitment prior to it happening.

It was kind of a big story on CNN, but the much bigger story was when they did the test. So this was a case where we knew they were breaking ground on this site that was for a centrifuge assembly facility because the Iranians had said that. But we had the good problem of not being able to tell whether the former firing range had been had been cleared because it was going to be a support camp facility.

Which is what the folks at Maxar thought right away, by the way. Stephen Wood just nailed it out the gate. Or whether it was going to be a cut-and-cover facility. And it was in part because we didn't have any pictures of the tunnels. Although on the 1st of December, and this is where the New York Times visual investigation story comes in, we got a picture from Planet that just happens to be at a perfect angle, and you can see one of the tunnel entrances and a giant spoil pile.

Aaron 28:51

And then I think one of the things that I think also bears mentioning is how major media outlets have also changed to keep up with this. Even from... Like covering early Syria, if you remember the Brown Moses blog, now it's Bellingcat, stuff like that, is how much better equipped major media is now to annotate and use satellite and open source to basically tell the story of things that we're seeing.

Jeffrey 29:23

Well, New York Times has a visual investigations team. And we did this story in conjunction with them. You know, we had we had used the three meter imagery to show that, yes, there was construction related activity. We had gotten a really beautiful Maxar imagery image to which, you know. Was just, just too early to be helpful, which is like, again, I can't say enough what an amazing problem that is to have. I'm looking at right now. Yeah, it's very, I shouldn't say it's too early to be helpful, because like I say, Stephen Wood immediately looked at the former firing range and said that he didn't think it would be a cut and cover facility because he saw a chute for dumping and a, and a vehicle next to it. The Iranians love those chutes to dump.

Yeah, so, you know, he got it. I was just not comfortable making a decision at that point. But, you know, he's right. And then on December 1, we got the planted image where we got the really nice shot of the tunnel entrance. And the spoil pile at that point was very pronounced. So, you know, one thing... Oh, and so the reason I was saying all that was to say that, you know, the visual investigations team, after...

After we saw it in the three meter imagery and said, yes, there is construction. And then after we got the Maxar imagery where, you know, we were left with these two competing hypotheses, you know, Christoph circled back and was like, you know, when we get a new picture, let's walk a reader through how we do this.

Aaron 31:02

This is great.

Jeffrey 31:04

And then it just – it was a kind of happy coincidence that the next picture we got so clearly answered that question. So to me, that's really wild.

Aaron 31:17

No, and it's sort of the story that the Biden administration will – because I don't know. I mean I'm sure you get these questions all the time. It's just like this is what the Biden administration is going to inherit. And – It's something that Arianne Tabatabai also featured on the deal, always says when referencing sort of a clean return to the JCPOA, is that even if they come back into limits, into the sublimits within the JCPOA, is that time hasn't stood still for, what, the last three and a half, four years?

Jeffrey 31:48

Yeah, that's true.

Aaron 31:49

And things have moved forward. So even with the sort of success in the sabotage, right, which was widely covered, and I remember all the speculation, how did the – allegedly the Israelis, were they able to get in there to be able to put off this explosion? If you actually judge sabotage by the outcomes of the act – It doesn't necessarily lead you to better places because the Iranian centrifuge program is not set back.

Natanz is relatively... The site Natanz is going in such a place where it's actually less advantageous to arms control interests, to U.S. interests than when we started.

Jeffrey 32:32

Well, I would say two things. One is it's now much harder to destroy because it's underground. But it's also going to be bigger. Salahi said it was going to be bigger. And Dave Schmerler was annoyed at me because I put the little footprint of the existing building to show that it would certainly fit inside the tunnel. And so that actually, Dave, I think is right.

He's annoyed because he's like, now people are going to think that you're saying that's how big it's going to be. But it's not going to be that big. It's going to be bigger than that because Salahi has said it's going to be bigger than that. And because in the time since that December 1 picture, we have seen additional tunnel entrances open up and we're seeing more spoil.

So, you know, what we're going to end up with is a bigger facility underground. You know, which is just a worse world to be in than when you had a smaller facility above ground. So, like, OK, you bought yourself. Six months, a year, maybe for the for for the assembly of, you know, newer centrifuges that might might go into the R&D.

But like what? So like what did Trump do with the first six months of that year? And the answer is waste it. So what was the purpose of that endeavor? By the way, a couple of things I want to put on the table. So we visually found the signs of the construction because we were interested in this site.

Planet's machine learning algorithm got it too.

Aaron 34:19

Oh, I didn't know that.

Jeffrey 34:20

Yeah, so it was a really nice example where if we had just drawn a bounding box around Natanz and told Planet, tell us when there's a new road or a new building, it would have picked it up. Wow.

Aaron 34:31

Wow, I didn't realize that.

Jeffrey 34:34

Yeah, so that's going to make our life much easier if we get this underway. So that's one thing. To answer your earlier thing, I am not convinced that we should be telling ourselves that we can't just re-enter things. I agree it is harder, but there is this DC I'm smarter than everybody else thing that some people are doing, which is about taking a solvable problem and making it unsolvable so that they matter.

Aaron 35:02

No, I look, I do think we look, I think we can reenter. I think that the pathways to reentering are ultimately solvable and they look a lot like, you know, like how we entered in the first place versus, you know, like implement, you know, I do think we can reenter. My point is that over the past four years, it's what you just said.

Even through the increase of sanctions and the sort of ostensible, in theory, I don't actually agree with this, increase in leverage, we didn't do anything with that leverage other than tell ourselves that we had created leverage. And so when we come back into the deal, we're actually going to be worse off than when we started. I don't think you can't reenter the deal.

This can be solved. Yeah. But the place to generate more leverage at the front end of the Trump administration was on aligning on positions with the Europeans to increase pressure on Iran to do things in excess of the JCPOA that we wanted and spending four years perhaps into the Biden administration, you know, working on those issues with the trust that was built up.

Now we have to basically start again at scratch.

Jeffrey 36:09

Yeah, I have an idea. It might even be a happy note. But I am mindful of what Jeremy Shapiro once said, that to a senior government official, an outside idea, even a good one, is like a diamond ring on a desert island. Abstractly valuable, but practically useless. I love Jeremy. So I have my good idea, but it's probably useless.

Some of the safeguards provisions sunset, particularly relating to centrifuge workshops and uranium mines, right?

Aaron 36:43

Right.

Jeffrey 36:46

I have said it before. I will say it again. On the issue of centrifuge workshops, which is an issue directly engaged by the fact that the assembly facility is being rebuilt. Mm-hmm. I have long advocated for Japan and maybe the Urenko countries to accept some additional safeguards at their workshops and assembly facilities that are analogous to the ones the Iranians are living under in exchange for a commitment from the Iranians to continue it themselves.

Aaron 37:35

Well, don't kill your career with the Biden administration too early because that sounds like a good one that they could take up in 2021.

Jeffrey 37:41

You can think about the same thing on the uranium mining side. Go to some of the big uranium mining countries, you know, Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia. Maybe we could take the measures outlined in the JCPOA that are going to sunset. And other countries can agree to live by them, raising the standard of safeguards, solving your problem with the Iranians being signaled out, and just generally improving the quality of safeguards around the world.

Aaron 38:08

I would say you can do it here, but the Russians own our uranium, so I can't really say that anymore.

Jeffrey 38:13

That was a joke!

Aaron 38:15

That was a joke, and that era should be ending. Okay. With that, I think we should do the sign-off, huh? All right. So with that, thank you, everybody, for listening. We are rebooting the pod. So thanks, everybody, for coming back. There is still chaos in my house. If you can hear all my children upstairs and my wife is texting me saying it's time to wrap it up.

So we're wrapping it up. So with that, thank you, everybody. Jeffrey, this was a pleasure. If you enjoy this and you want to get in on the conversation, we're setting our agenda for the upcoming 2021 season of the Arms Control Walk podcast. Head on over to patreon.com slash ACW podcast. For $3 as a student or $5 as a normal person, you can join the conversation.

So with that, Jeffrey, I got a jet, and it's been great seeing you. It's been a real pleasure. Merry Christmas, and hopefully we'll do this again soon.