The Attack that Knocked Back Iran’s Nuclear Program – The Cipher Brief

In a series of expert-level interviews after the attack, The Cipher Brief spoke with deeply-experienced experts about the wider regional implications, Iran’s ability to deliver a meaningful response and the incredible intelligence feat in pulling it off.

In this conversation, former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI and current geopolitical expert on the region, Norm Roule about the strikes and their broader impact on the region. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE CONTEXT

• Israel launched extensive airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities and military targets early Friday. Iranian media reported several top military leaders and nuclear program figures were killed. Israel said it hit nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow. Israel launched another round of strikes later Friday, reportedly targeting missile and drone launching sites.
• Iran reportedly launched around 100 drones at Israel in retaliation to the first wave of strikes, but Israeli officials said most were intercepted. Iran later launched a missile barrage, with explosions heard in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Officials said the U.S. military was helping intercept missiles Iran fired at Israel.
• Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the Israeli attacks a “crime” and a “declaration of war,” warning Israel that it will face a “bitter and painful fate” and “harsh punishment.”
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks would continue “for as long as necessary, to remove this threat,” referring to Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio distanced the U.S. from the attacks, saying “Israel took unilateral action” and that the U.S. was “not involved in the strikes.” He added that Washington’s priority is protecting U.S. forces in the region.
• President Donald Trump described the attacks as “excellent” and suggested there was “more to come, a lot more.” He added that Israel has a lot of weapons thanks to the U.S. and that “they know how to use it.”

Norman T. Roule

Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. As NIM-I at ODNI, he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran, including IC engagement with senior policymakers in the National Security Council and the Department of State.

The Cipher Brief: There were rumors that Israel was planning a series of strikes if Iran did not slow down its pursuit of enriched uranium. Was there anything about the timing of this operation that surprised you?

Roule: I think this attack demonstrated that the Israelis have indeed achieved and maintained operational supremacy over Iran’s air defenses — which says a lot about U.S. military technology and is going to speak a lot about where this campaign goes. I think what is unclear is what does victory look like for Israel in this campaign? What is success? What do they hope to achieve that allows them to end this campaign?

The Cipher Brief: Iran’s uranium enrichment program has been going on for decades as have Israel’s promises that they’re not going to allow Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon. There’s been a lot of rhetoric lately that Iran was within days of developing such a weapon. There have been estimates like these for more than a decade, so what changed this time?

Roule: The timeline has changed, and comes down to basic science. The amount of highly-enriched uranium that Iran has achieved is unprecedented. The level of that enrichment at 60 percent is unprecedented. Iran devotes most of its enrichment capacity to 60 percent enrichment, which has no civilian use. And indeed, it is a military grade enrichment, but it is the sort of enrichment you use for military propulsion systems, which Iran does not have. So you’ve got an awful lot of bad things going on just on enrichment.

Most of Iran’s sites are underground — to a greater extent than in the past. Iran’s centrifuges are far more advanced than they were, hence they produce highly-enriched uranium much faster than they did 10 years ago. So the situation today is much darker. And Iran is developing two extremely advanced centrifuges that are still some years away, but eventually will come online. And of course, Iran’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) program as described in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Golden Dome announcement, is a stunning development on its own.

The Cipher Brief: I’m glad you brought that up in terms of the technology because one of the most successful attacks ever against Iran’s nuclear program was Stuxnet, which used cyber operations to take Iranian centrifuges – needed to enrich uranium that could be used in nuclear weapon – offline temporarily, causing a setback for the Iranians. But this, as you mentioned, is a different era. Can you talk more about this new world of advanced centrifuges and how these are speeding up the enrichment process?

Roule: A centrifuge is rated on its capacity to produce highly-enriched uranium in a certain period of time, known as a Separative Work Unit or a SWU. At the time of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran was using what were known as the IR1s, its basic centrifuge, which had – we’ll just say – a capacity of one SWU a year or one kilogram of highly-enriched uranium a year. When you look at the IR4s, the IR6s that came out, suddenly they’re eight or 10 times more efficient, so you can produce much faster and with a smaller array of centrifuges. When it comes to the IR8 and the IR9 — Iran has one of each now but sooner or later they’ll have cascades of these – they’re 25 and 40 to 50 times as advanced. So, once these are online, Iran could very quickly have the capability to produce weapons-grade fissile material. And the facilities, a covert facility in particular, could be hidden very easily.

One more point there: Iran has ceased cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and has stopped reporting on the parts and pieces it’s producing for its centrifuges. Why is that important? Because of Tehran’s cooperation with the IAEA, we knew how many centrifuge parts were being made, how many were broken, and how many were produced. We had a sense at least, of what they had. But if you don’t have those numbers, you don’t know if they’re producing more for a covert facility or not. Now just imagine you have these advanced centrifuges and you don’t know where they’re located and they’re producing potentially nuclear weapons-grade material. It’s unacceptable and, in fairness to Israel, it’s a very different technological environment than we had in 2015.

At any point, Iran could have said “we disagree with the IAEA, they’re a bunch of stinkers, but you know, here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to stop producing 60% enriched uranium, we’re only going to produce what we need for civilian purposes, and we’re going to open up our program to the IAEA to show we’re good people.” And instead they did the opposite. Whenever the IAEA complained, Iran would – just to show that they couldn’t be pushed around – make even more advanced centrifuges. So this week, the IAEA Board of Governors censured Iran for the second time in 20 years. And Iran’s response? We’re gonna increase the number of advanced centrifuges in the one facility that looks as if it were designed to build nuclear-grade fissile material, the enrichment facility at Fordow.

The Cipher Brief: In terms of Iran’s retaliation for this strike, we saw drone strikes in Israel overnight with little measurable impact. How much muscle does Iran have left that it can flex in retaliation?

Roule: The answer to that question is an important one because what happens in the next couple of days is going to decide, perhaps, the near-term future of the Middle East.

Israel, according to initial press reports, has killed multiple Iranian senior officers, perhaps as many as a dozen along with their staff. So, the people who would have ordered ballistic missile strikes, may now all be dead. So upfront, the system of response may not exist, which may produce confusion and a delayed reaction.

The second point is that if Israel is able to – in follow-on attacks – destroy launchers, mobile launchers, and is able to destroy the missiles themselves, and Iran is not able to provide that responsive attack, what does it say about Iran’s capacity as an offensive power in the Middle East? Critics will ask if Iran is defanged, much as Hezbollah has been defanged?

But let’s now take this in the opposite direction. Let’s say that Iran does achieve an extraordinary and, God forbid, unfortunate success against Israel with massive civilian casualties. Then you now potentially have a much greater Israeli counter response.

There are 200-250,000 Americans in Israel and if any of them is injured, that could pull the United States in. So the events that may occur around Iran’s missile program in the coming days will tell you much about where this campaign is going, what kind of country Iran is going to be perceived as being as a threat in the near term, and where this conflict will go.

The Cipher Brief: What are the indicators you’re looking for in terms of any capabilities by Iran’s proxies?

Roule: I think when you’re looking at Iran reconstituting its proxies or using them now, you have to think in terms of time as well as space. In time, if you’re looking at right now, they don’t have a lot of options. Hamas is obviously unable to support them. I think a Lebanese Hezbollah official said they’re not going to respond, and the Lebanese government has said you shouldn’t respond. Iraqi militias have not shown any great enthusiasm to respond. And the Houthis probably will have some capacity for a limited missile firing, but nothing that is such a strategic threat against Israel that it’s going to shift the conflict.

In the long run, if you take that timeline out, maybe by a year or two or three years, the Iranian goal is to reconstitute all that and rebuild it — much as they did when they thought Assad was falling in 2013. We need to recall the Quds Force still exists. It still has about 15,000 personnel. It still has a massive budget. And they’re looking at Africa, in places like Sudan and Ethiopia, to rebuild the program. And by the way, a point on Africa — in the IAEA, three countries voted against the censure of Iran. Russia, China, and Burkina Faso.

The Cipher Brief: What are going to be some of the indicators that this is actually becoming more destabilizing for the region, and not just the effects of one operation?

Roule: I’ll be looking first to see if local security officials believe the Iranian Quds Force or intelligence services or proxies are targeting Americans, Israelis or others in their countries as tourists. That would obviously touch the lives of those individuals, but also the tourist industries, the businesses, the investments, et cetera.

Secondly, these governments are going to be concerned about the potential of the conflict expanding, which is unlikely at present, and in a way that could impact oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, for Iran to do that, it would have to make a decision that would risk bringing in the Gulf Cooperation Council and alienating China in hopes that such pressure would cause the international community to pressure Israel to stop a conflict. That’s unlikely at present. There’s a big risk for Iran.

And last, of course, I’m going to be looking to see if military action spreads to U.S. bases. That depends on whether or not the Iranians perceive, correctly or incorrectly, that the U.S. is playing some role in this attack. If they perceive that, then our bases in the region, our personnel will be fair game in their view. And that also risks collateral damage to these governments and their economies. And then, you would see airline traffic being shut down. You would see trade being cut. You would see investments being shifted. So the world could change.

At present, the region and the United States and Europe are all doing their best to contain this conflict, and indeed to end it as quickly as possible. But events are going to have their own momentum over the next few days. And it’s going to take a while for this momentum to run its course before we can see what happens.

The Cipher Brief: We’ve heard Israel say that this is a multi-pronged attack. This isn’t a one and done deal. How do you anticipate the next strikes that may be coming?

Roule: If you look at the names and titles of those who were reportedly killed who are among Iran’s leadership, the list is extraordinary. We’re talking about the head of their aerospace program, the man responsible for missiles and drones, General [Amir Ali] Hadjizadeh. We’re talking about the chief of staff, the head of ground forces for the army, the head of the Navy. There are a lot of names floating around, as well as the inner circle of staff that may have been near these individuals when they were killed. This is going to shut down the command and control, cohesiveness and efficiency of these units for the coming days. And that may produce a false positive. It may produce a lull of activity or an absence of activity that people perceive as a weakness or indecision, where it really just means the process of making the decision is taking a while to get through a new system that is being reconstituted.

If you’re Israel, once you work in command and control, once you reconfirm that you’ve got air defense taken care of, once you make sure that you’ve got missile launchers being reduced to a consistent threat for your own homeland, then you focus on other targets. We don’t know what those other targets are and to what extent. Will it be more nuclear sites? Will it be more military industry, industrial programs?

Right now, you have this situation where Israel has air superiority and freedom of movement throughout the skies of Iran — which again is an extraordinary testimony to their intelligence, training, professionalism, and also the American technology that we have shared with them, and the partnership that CENTCOM and EUCOM have built over many years. This is an extraordinary example of American partnership playing its role.

This is the second time in a month that a country has imported into an adversary, intelligence personnel with a large number of drones in a substantial operation, and then undertook a “Pearl Harbor”, “9-11”, whatever you want to call it, strategic surprise operation that transformed the structural dynamic. This is a massive defeat for Iran’s domestic and external intelligence services, just as the Ukrainian attack against the Russian aircraft was an embarrassing failure for Russian domestic and external intelligence services. And there is a lesson in there because if places like Mother Russia and Iran, which have significant counterintelligence capacity in their countries, miss these sorts of things, what might happen in the United States or in a Western country, where our borders are somewhat porous for people being able to bring in material and undertake such operations? So there’s a powerful reminder of our need to get our act together here before some adversary does something similar in our own country.

The Cipher Brief: What does success look like in this operation for Israel?

Roule: Based on the nature of the attacks as my only point of data, there is an implication of a significant intelligence capacity on the part of Israel. If that capacity has not been reduced by the elimination of targets who might have been sources of intelligence themselves while they were being observed, then Israel is able to then monitor Iranian reaction to these events, which again will be chaotic in the beginning. But Israel could have one of several goals.

The first goal could be to punish Iran, which is in its most fragile political, economic and security state since 1988. Punish it to the extent that its leadership, hoping to keep the Islamic revolution surviving through the next generation of leadership transition, go into the arms of the Trump administration, which continues to say, ‘we’re looking for a diplomatic solution, gentlemen’. And then the Supreme Leader drinks that cup of poison and gives up enrichment. And if they do that, then Iran doesn’t have a path to a nuclear weapon. We don’t have to worry about their ICBMs in 2035. That’s option A.

Option B is that the Israelis have taken out quite a few members of Iran’s IRGC and its military and some of its nuclear program. This could provoke a reduction of the pressure on Iran’s people who are being oppressed. And this might be a moment for those people to stand up and say, as millions have done for many years, we would like a different government. And that’s up to the Iranian people to choose that moment.

Last, you could have some variation of that in the middle, where the Iranian government just says, we’ve taken it on the chin, we’ve made a firm decision on the inside. ‘My goodness, we never want to build a bomb because the idiots who went in that direction, well, they’re all underground and they almost cost us the revolution and they almost cost us our jobs with unrest.’ So, we’re going to make a decision, but we’re going to sound tough in public because we just want to sound tough. But the intelligence would tell the Israelis, and perhaps the United States and others, that you don’t need to worry as much about Iran. But Israel’s leadership will need to assess if that’s good enough for their goals.

We should note the Israelis have lost no personnel so far, it’s been a relatively low cost campaign, and it’s been humiliating for the Iranian government. Only a couple of days ago, one of the individuals who was killed said publicly that Iran was about to deliver some terrible blow against Israel. Well, he’s dead now and I think many members of his staff are dead. Those are the variations of where this is going.

And there is another little twist — any of this could produce a very different Middle East: an Iran that is incapable of being perceived as an offensive actor. That means if you are a Gulf state, you don’t have to listen or worry about Iran as much as you did in the past. You could have an Iran that is punished more frequently for its mischief and its violence using proxies. Maybe a Gulf state can undertake some of that punishment on its own. If Israel can do it, why can’t a Gulf state do it with the same American kit? Emirati, Saudi pilots, other pilots in the Gulf, they’re exceptional pilots. And if Israeli pilots can perform this way, Gulf pilots can do just as nicely. And if cyber tools work for the Israelis, cyber tools can work for other countries as well. So, suddenly there’s an equalizing moment here and Iran’s size and its reputation are being whittled away over these hours. So Iran has got to organize, survive, reset deterrence and reset its mojo with the region or there will be consequences.

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