Iran: A Nuclear Power? W/Dr. Theodore Postol

Hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Excited to be with you as always, but I'm even more excited today because I have an interesting, uh, guest for you that you guys gonna learn a lot from. So, but before I bring him in into the studio here, let me just share a quick, uh, housekeeping with you, uh, regarding what's coming up. Remember to join me tomorrow for my conversation with Larry Johnson. We'll be talking about the recent Donald Trump's decision to move nuclear weapons near the Russian borders and what it means. Also, uh, be on the lookout for my upcoming conversation with Melissa Park. She's in nuclear disarmament. Uh, we— I'm still working out the details with her office, and as soon as I finalize this, I will, guys, let you know. So for now, let me bring in my guest, uh, Dr. Ted Postol. Hi, Ted.

Hi, how are you? Nice to be here.

Of course, so excited. The community is very, very excited to have you here. To those who do not know who Dr. Postol is, I'm gonna give you a brief bio, but you guys please make sure to go to the description where I put a full bio of Dr. Postol there. So Dr. Postol is a professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. That's Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Uh, he did his undergraduate work in physics and his graduate work was in nuclear engineering. In addition to being a Pentagon advisor, he was also the scientific advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations. This one has to do with the whole entity of the special ops. So Dr. Postol's expertise is in nuclear weapons systems including submarine warfare, applications of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles defense, and ballistic missiles more generally. So like I said earlier, guys, go to the, uh, uh, uh, full bio to read up about Dr. Postol because you need to understand his background for what he's going to be sharing with us into all this. Okay, uh, Where is Dr. Postol? We missed him. He'll come back here. So, so we're going to be addressing a host of issues. I'm going to be talking from Iran missile technology to his assessments regarding the Israeli nuclear Iron Dome to the US defense capabilities. And we're going to conclude with our conversation regarding Iran's nuclear program or capabilities. So, so let me wait till he reconnect here. Well, I kind of lost him here. And just to highlight to you guys the background for Dr. Postol, his understanding of really the missile technology is, is very pivotal, especially at this time. It's because it provides us an idea of Where, for example, when we hear about Iran's Khorramshahr-5 ICBM, what does it mean? Is this like the advanced systems that can really, really target the US? Is it the same system? Here it is. Here is that. No worries.

I just can't seem to control this thing.

No worries. No worries.

So upload slides and it doesn't— seem to be working for me.

Oh, it's not? Well, so you have to add them up.

Well, we may— we can probably talk without them, uh, but it helps.

So if you, if you get a chance later on, but you will be busy talking, if you could send them to me and I'll see the upload.

Working on it as we talk.

Okay, well, anyway, here's what, uh, and I already talked to the community as to what we're going to be covering, uh, and so forth. So we're going to be talking about the, uh, missile technology, of course, for Iran, then the assessments of the, uh, Israel Iron Dome, then the US defense capabilities, and we conclude with Iran's status of a nuclear program. I know you are under tight schedule, and I'm going to be respectful of your time. So let's get into it right away, uh, Ted, if I may. Uh, I argued in one of my books that I wrote about Iran back then, and the argument I made was that Iran's possession of short, medium, and long-range missiles at that time, dubbed the Shahab, an Arabic word for meteor, can reach Tel Aviv. So yes, and, and my point in all this, and I'm not going to go through the whole, uh, excerpt here, because when Iran decided to go alone to develop its military capabilities, that include the missile technology, and now we have what is known as Iran's Khorramshahr-5 ICBM. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about a capability that puts Iran on the list of countries with ICBM, the likes of Russia, North Korea, and China?

Well, it's beginning to look that way. I'll be a little bit hedge— I'm really sorry. That I can't upload the slides because I actually had some slides where I showed, uh, this, uh, missile, um, in a silhouette compared— it looks, it looks close to but not the same as a North Korean ICBM, which we know is, is ICBM capable, called the Hwasong-15. And, um, The, um, oh, okay, that's, that's a Hwasong-15. And, um, the Iranian version of the missile, uh, looks very close. It's a little, uh, it, it, it's a little shorter, it seems, but it does, uh, there are details that are different, but, uh, those details could simply be modifications that the North Koreans put in on the missile, or, or in fact, the, the Iranians could have put onto the missile. Iran has a long program of cooperation with North Korea in ballistic missile technologies, and in fact, the Uh, if you look at the, um, uh, the, uh, uh, I'm sorry, I, I, my language, I don't, I, I, um, the Safir, for example, this vehicle that was used to launch, uh, Iran's, uh, first satellite, um, very small satellite that has technology that was clearly similar to the technology used by the North Koreans in their Unha-3 launch vehicle. Again, I'm sorry, I don't have the slides here because I could show silhouettes of all these missiles. And the, those, the launch vehicles, the satellite launch vehicles used by Iran are are derived from— use rocket motors that were taken off the, um, uh, a, a Russian, uh, submarine-launched ballistic missile known as the SS-N-6. The variant of that that the North Koreans were flying was a missile called the Musudan, and, um, it, uh, the Musudan, uh is a kind of stretched SS-N-6. The SS-N-6 was about a 14-ton missile. The North Koreans lengthened the missile somewhat, and that looks like the— I'm sorry about the pronunciation— the, what do you call it, the Khamo-Mir?

Yeah, Khamo-Mir.

Yeah, the Khamo-Mir-4 looks like it's derived from the Musudan.

So this is— you're talking about the comparison to the Khoramshahr-4, Iranian Khoramshahr-4?

Yeah, but the, the 5, uh, the Khamoshar-5, yeah, is a completely different missile, it looks like. And, uh, that's the way it appears. I, I have done very little work on this. You, you only alerted me to this the other day.

That's right.

It's still my fault. I haven't been following. I did a lot of work on Iran's program maybe 10 years ago, but I have focused on other things since then. So I have not had a chance to look at what Iran now has, and I only did a very superficial quick look.

Yeah.

And the superficial quick look makes it— it appears like the, um, uh, the 5, uh, variant is a new missile, uh, closely related to the Hwasong-15. If that's correct. Yeah, I'm not—

well, actually, actually, Ted, because Iran never disclosed about the Khorramshahr-5 till recently, so I was sure The research that I did on Iran back then, you know, I was convinced that they're not gonna play all their cards. So they never mentioned about Khorramshahr-5 till after what took place between the US when we bombed the nuclear facilities and what Israel did. But you are right about the connection between Iran's development of this ICBM, the Khorramshahr-5 and North Korea's model. You are absolutely correct because I verified that information myself.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the, uh, the, um, uh, we have a photograph. Again, unfortunately, I'm unable to, um, uh, to upload the, uh, the PDF file, but, um, uh, I have silhouettes of both missiles next to each other. And it looks like the Iranian version is slightly modified from the North Korean version, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're not derived from the same line of missiles.

Yeah.

So maybe the next time I talk with you, I'll have done a little more work. We'll have a little bit more data. Yeah. And, but the missile that we do see in flight that's shown in, um, in a video that, uh, uh, Iran just published, um, it, it, it just looking at the missile and knowing a little bit about the rocket motors and technologies, assuming they're similar to, um, uh, to the Hwasong-15, uh, I'm just off— keep in mind, this is off the top of my head at this point. Yeah, uh, it looks like, um, the Iranian missile uses a twin nozzle rocket motor known as the RD-250. We know that the North Koreans have this missile, and we know they have transferred rocket motors various times to Iran. And if they have these motors, uh, they could certainly have transferred them to Iran.

Yeah.

Uh, the, um, the motors were obtained, uh, probably in the late 1990s. Russian motors are tremendously, uh, long-lived and sturdy. They're very, very, very well designed for longevity. And, um, and, uh, I think it's likely that these missiles were obtained, uh, the rocket motors were obtained, um, in the late 1990s when, um, the Soviet Union was collapsing. People had no salaries, uh, you know, the country was in desperate straits. It really was. Incidentally, it was a tragedy that was aggravated by the West. This is another example of Western hostility toward Russia. Had the West— someone you may want to talk to at some point is Jeffrey Sachs. And Jeffrey has talked about— he was on the— I was at the bottom, he was at the top. And you know, we were looking at things from different directions. And of course, the situation in Russia was absolutely desperate.

Yeah.

And a small amount of money from the West could have helped stabilize the situation in Russia, but we cynically did not help the Russians.

By design.

Left them to, to, to flail around in, in desperate economic shape.

Yeah.

And people got so desperate that they started selling rocket motor components to the North Koreans.

Wow.

And this occurred somewhere around 1997. There was a group of Russian rocket scientists who went to North Korea at the invitation of North Korea, and more of them were going to come to North Korea when, when the, uh, the FSB, uh, got, uh, knowledge of this and stopped another plane filled with their people and their families that were going to North Korea. But a bunch of them did get out to North Korea, and they, uh, formed the initial intellectual foundation of North Korea's missile program.

Missile program.

And these people were good. They knew what they were doing, and there was a lot of innovation, which of course the West is, you know, you have these people who claim to be analysts and they're not really. They really don't know what they're looking at, but if you looked at the program as I did with some knowledge, you could see all kinds of innovation being done by the North Koreans in their program, and that was inspired by the Russian experts. Yeah, but of course, those Russian experts trained a new generation of North Korean experts, you know, and Korea of course has a culture of great intellectual achievement, incidentally, like Iran does.

Yeah.

And, um, and so I'm sure they had extremely capable people they brought in, talented people. Those talented people were working with very talented Russians, and, you know, we now have an establishment in both North Korea and Iran of people, indigenous experts who were trained. You know, there was a sort of a sequence of, of training and mentoring that has created these two programs which are dependent on Russian components that would be difficult to build even, even today., by either Iran or North Korea. I mean, these components, the rocket motors, are so sophisticated. The particular motor I'm talking about, for example, this motor was designed to be the workhorse of all Russian ICBMs from the early 1960s.

Wow.

More than 2,000 engine tests by the Russians. That's how much effort went into designing and implementing this rocket motor.

Yeah.

And so it's not— there's no— there's no statement, there's no implied statement about North Korea or Iran not having the intellectual resources to build an engine like this, but it has to do with a tremendous industrial support system that you would need to design an engine like this. So this— these engines are not easily replicated. In fact, I don't believe that either North Korea or Iran could replicate these engines by themselves, you know. But there is probably a boatload of these engines available, you know, because when the transfer occurred The Russians were already moving to a new generation of special, of more advanced rocket motors, and they probably had thousands of these rocket motors, and God knows how many of them were given to the North, you know, were sold to the North Koreans. So there could be a very large number of them.

So yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, uh, Ted, and thank you for sharing this with the community, because, uh, to follow up on this before we move into the next segment of this conversation, because we have 4 segments that need to— we need to cover, and I'd like to cover with you before you move, you, you, you leave. Uh, the Khorramshahr-5, the Iran one, the ICBM. So, and I just want to get your input for the community to understand, uh, are we talking on the same level? Like, for example, I'm sure I'm— we are not, but nonetheless, I'm gonna mention this. When we think about the Chinese DF-5B, when we think about the Russian RS-26 or the Sarmat, the Satan, what NATO calls it, or we think about the submarines launched from, the missiles launched from submarines, where does the Khorramshahr-5 stand in comparison for the efficiency of it?

Well, it, you know, if it can deliver a nuclear payload to the given range, it's efficient enough. Wow. I mean, right, so we don't need to worry about whether it's got the most advanced, you know, uh, the, these other, first of all, these, I see these missiles are, they're two kinds of missiles basically, they're, uh, which are very different technologies. If you're advanced in one, you may know, you may have almost no ability in the other.. But there's what's called a solid propellant missile, which, which where the rocket motor is filled with a solid material and the solid material will burn very rapidly. And it has the advantage. Yes, that's a picture of a solid propellant missile. And you can tell if you, if you knew what you were looking at, you could tell it's solid propellant because because of all the smoke that's associated with the plume. A liquid propellant missile has a much cleaner flame. So if you look at the— that's probably a solid propellant.

Solid, yeah.

Yeah, that's okay. But if you have a picture of the Iranian missile in flight, you know, the The 5?

No, I don't have the 5. I don't have the 5.

Later in flight, there's a picture of it. Like, again, I could have showed it with a very pale bluish flame coming out the back of it. You can almost— you can see through the flame. So these are— well, that's a liquid propellant missile that uses a different propellant.

Oh, okay.

So there— so that uses a lower energy propellant than the propellant that's being used by the, uh, the KavaShahr-5. So, so, so the, the Iranian missile is using a more advanced propellant than the propellant being shown in that missile. These missiles— I could give a short talk on this, uh, you know, if we can get the slides up at some point. Yeah, more informed about this. But yeah, you know, there are many missile technologies that have been worked with. But the, uh, but my guess— again, this is a guess based on almost really almost no time, uh, examining this— yeah, is that, uh, the, the Iranian missile should be capable of delivering an atomic bomb of the kind that I believe Iran is capable of building at this time, because the Iranian bomb would not weigh a lot. The Iranian bomb would be— would— could probably weigh 100 to 150 kilograms. So we're not talking about a tremendously heavy bomb. It would have a yield of about 15 kilotons, which means it's very comparable to the nuclear weapons in yield to the nuclear weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So it's not a thermonuclear weapon of a very advanced design, but it's good enough. I mean, if you were— yeah, there, there you go. That's, uh, Hiroshima.

That's correct.

And, um, and, uh, in, uh, the level of devastation is complete over an area of about, um, uh—

okay, we don't hear, uh, Dr. Postol, so Oh, you're on silent, so— oh, there you are.

Am I? Okay, I'm sorry.

No, no, no worries. Technology is working. You know how it is, Dad.

Seems like almost nothing's working in this one. I'm sorry.

No worries.

So, um, uh, the, um, the, uh, Hiroshima-type bomb would, would devastate the downtown of, uh, of a city like New York. Yeah, it would not destroy the whole city. Yeah, but it would destroy enough of the city that it would be a catastrophe beyond anything the United States had ever experienced. Yeah, so, uh, you know, how much is enough, you know? And, uh, I, I can tell you for sure that no American President or military person would ever want that to happen to the United States, for sure. So, so the, the, the availability of a, um, of a, uh, a nuclear atomic weapon of that yield is enough to, to deter the United States for sure. Yeah, well, I'm sure anyone else—

yeah, I'm sure the Khorramshahr-5 has the range of 12,000 kilometers, which means within reach to the US. The same aspects of what the Chinese did with the DF-5B prior to announcing it. So the Pentagon— and I read the report, Ted, not the classified version, of course, I just read what was released to the public— that they were surprised that the Chinese disclosed the specs of this particular testing, because the testing of the DF-5, which is an ICBM with a range of about 11,500 kilometers and went all the way to the Pacific. And I watched the, uh, I watched the, the, the replay of what the Ministry of Defense in China released, the civilian version.

If you could send me the URL to that, I'd be very interested.

I will take care of it. Yeah. And next time we'll, we'll talk about all this. We'll make sure we have your slides.

And we could— we'll practice. We have to practice with this thing, see if we can ever get—

I wanted the community to be well informed regarding this, uh, because—

no, no, this is important.

This is very important because you always hear the media saying, oh, Iran cannot develop missiles or this. But now—

no, Iran is definitely, uh, a sophisticated ballistic missile country. And, um, the, uh, the Iranian ballistic missile, uh, is a liquid propellant. This, this, uh, Khamoshahr would— again, I, I'll have to get the pronunciation down for the next, uh, uh, and, um, the, uh, that's definitely a liquid propellant missile. It's almost certainly, uh, I think I'll probably wind up confirming that it uses the RD-250 rocket motors. It's burning. I know the propellant. I can tell you just from the looking at the plume and, and the rocket motors, um, it's— it uses, uh, a propellant called UDMH, which stands for unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine, which is a very sophisticated, uh, fuel developed first by the Russians and transferred and used by, the North Koreans, and obviously shared with, uh, with Iran. And, um, the oxidizer is, uh, is what's called nitrogen tetroxide, which is also a well-known material. It's very energetic and it gives you really close to the maximum capability, uh, you can get from a rocket motor. There are some more advanced rocket motors that use techniques that are even more advanced which the Russians now use. But, but those motors are— the, the RD-250 is more than enough capability to, to be able to deliver, to produce an ICBM that Iran could use to deliver a nuclear weapon, uh, to the United States. And let me point out that there's the range of a ballistic missile is connected intimately to the weight of the payload. So the ballistic missile can travel a longer range if the payload is lighter. And the payload for an Iranian ICBM would be a much lighter 150-kilogram atomic bomb. It would not— you'd not— you would not need a 1,000-kilogram payload. For this kind of missile. You would have to modify the ICBM in some minor ways to deal with this, but that we could discuss in a separate discussion. But it's very unlikely to not have the range because the payload is much lighter than the original missile was designed to carry.

Yeah.

So I think Iran—

Yeah, we certainly will address this next time with the slides and everything.

Yes.

Now let's move on to the part of this conversation here, and this one has to do with one of your articles that I read that you published back in 2021. I'm gonna, guys, share the link with you in which you disclosed, in which you disclosed about, or tell, or told the truth about the Israeli Iron Dome, one of the country's—

oh yeah, the Iron Dome. Yeah.

And sort of you proved right in a sense that you talked about it back in 2021. And when the Ansarullah or Houthis in Yemen were launching missiles, when Iran launched missiles, the Iron Dome, the Israeli Iron Dome couldn't block those missiles. What was wrong with the Iron Dome? Was it just a hype?

Well, first of all, the Iron Dome, when I was talking about the Iron Dome, You can't talk about a missile defense without talking about the target you're trying to hit because the different targets are more difficult or less difficult to hit. The Iron Dome was designed to engage artillery rockets. These are rockets with 20-kilometer ranges, the kinds of things that were being fired from Gaza into Israel. And so the Israelis built the system— the Israelis designed the systems, the Americans bought it for them. We paid for all of the development of the system. We are a co-belligerent in the case of Gaza. There's no question about it.

I agree.

The United States and the The Iron Dome was failing against much shorter range, slower moving, easier to intercept targets like, you know, artillery rockets with 20 kilometers range. So that's what I was talking about, not the longer range missiles that the Iranians were launching. The Iranians were launching 1,200, 1,500 kilometer range missiles. The speed of the Iranian missiles when they, when they came into the atmosphere was about 3 kilometers per second. So 3,000 meters every second. The artillery rockets are only maybe 200 meters per second. So you're talking. So, so you have the interceptor. So let's say this is the interceptor, and the interceptor has to see, has to see the, the target, uh, at a distance so it can maneuver. And that distance is, is, is governed, you know, if the speed is so fast that when you finally see it, you just don't have time to react.

React to it.

So the closing speed is a very important parameter, and Iron Dome could never hope to engage, uh, the, um, uh, the Iranian ballistic missiles. The, uh, the, uh, David's, uh, what do they call it, David's Sling, and, and, um, and the Arrow are supposed to be able to engage these missiles But I think the evidence is that all of the higher altitude missiles designed for faster rockets like Iran would be launching from its own territory, I think they essentially failed, including THAAD, the American system.

System.

We have little, we only have minor evidence of this, but we do have evidence. There are some videos that were taken from, uh, from Jordan. So we're seeing, we're seeing what's happening at higher altitudes. The videos we see that are taken in Israel are just showing things coming in and exploding, which of course means the attacks were successful.

We're successful.

So, um, uh, so the, um So we know that there were many explosions on the ground, many tens of explosions, and probably more than that because the Israelis were trying to stop publication of videos and photographs that showed damage, but they just couldn't. There was just so much damage they weren't able to suppress that information. And the kind of damage we saw on the ground was very substantial. They were obviously attacking places like Haifa and Tel Aviv, and in Haifa and Tel Aviv, the buildings are very strong because they're big concrete and steel buildings. The structure is, you know, because it's a big building, you have to put a lot of concrete and steel into it to make, you know, for sort of to hold up. And we could see there were, you know, significant damage to buildings that were very strong. In some cases, they were, uh, the, the outer walls were blown in, floors were collapsed. So the warheads that came in were of substantial yield. 450 kilograms is kind of a number that gets floating around, but some of the damage looked like they were from warheads bigger than that. Yeah. And, uh I don't, I don't know. One of the problems that— operational problems that Iran must have had— I, I don't know how, you know, they— doesn't mean they weren't able to launch these missiles, but, but the, the other versions of the Khamashar, the 4 and 3, they're liquid propellant, and because they're liquid propellant and they're heavy. They're maybe 20-ton weapons. They have to be on big, big transport vehicles, and those big vehicles are easier— they move more slowly. Yeah, they're more difficult to hide from aircraft. That doesn't mean you can't succeed in hiding them. It just means they're— they tend to be more vulnerable, and it takes you time to set up the missile when you're outdoors because you have to— you just can't move it around with the propellant in it. It just won't, it won't stand that kind of damage or that kind of, uh, you know, lateral accelerations when it's on, on a transport vehicle. So those— but those missiles can carry a much larger payload. You know, you're talking about, uh, 700 kilograms, uh, 800 kilograms. That's, you know, that's a real, you know, that's, uh, and I'm suspicious. I want to be clear, I don't know. I'm suspicious that Iran was successful in launching some of those missiles. I'm very suspicious of that because some of the damage in Tel Aviv looked very substantial even for a 450-kilogram warhead. But that's a guess. That's only a guess.

And I did share with the community some images from inside Israel where the destruction took place. Like, for example, when Iran targeted the research center for biological research and it was damaged completely. I saw the images.

Well, a 450-kilogram warhead is pretty—

Yeah, we'll do that.

We'll do that. Not something to be ignored. Anyway, that'll do a lot of damage. But in some of the buildings in downtown Tel Aviv, Yeah, there was some very severe damage, and either the warhead landed nearly on top of the building, which of course happens, or, or it was a heavy, bigger warhead. But the general damage around the building was also very severe over a large area. So it looked to me like it— the, the, uh, you know, it was— I, I had no way of knowing because I just don't have enough data from the glass sight, but it could well have been a larger than 450-kilogram warhead in some of the video, some of the images I saw. So it's quite possible that some of these missiles were successfully launched in spite of the threat of ground, you know, of ground attack from the air.

Interesting.

And it's also worthy of note that the shorter range missiles, that the more modern shorter range missiles that Iran now has, they have a payload of about 450 kilograms. They were launching successfully conventional warheads into Israel— Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba. Now this means that The 150-kilogram nuclear warhead could be carried by those missiles. So, so, uh, Iran has a very capable, uh, design of a missile which they have large numbers of that's solid propellant, and that's a lighter missile, which means it's easier to hide and launch., you know, under, you know, under air attack. So, um, uh, I, I think that looking at the bigger, heavier missiles, uh, for, uh, attacks, nuclear attacks on Israel, is actually the wrong thing to be doing. The lighter missiles that Iran already has in large numbers are more than up to the job of delivering a nuclear weapon of the kind that Iran has now or will have or could have. We don't know, and I think the Iranians will not tell us. I think the best strategy for Iran is just say, we might have it, we might not have it. If you attack us, even if we don't have it, we could have it in a few weeks. Yeah, you know, remain— don't force us into a decision to use it.

So they can remain ambiguous about it, which is, which is the right strategy for—

yeah.

Before we move on, I'm going to play a quick clip here and we'll move on into next question for that. Liking this video so far? Don't just be a watcher. Go ahead and hit the like, share, and subscribe button. And don't forget to tap the bell so you will not miss any of my videos or live streams. This way you will be supporting the channel that stands for the truth and objective reporting. The choice is yours. Thanks for your support. Now, this— yeah, yeah, go ahead, Ted.

I think a very important thing for your audience to hear about, and I can explain it in more detail in another talk, okay, um, is, is Iran has 400 kilograms, 408 kilograms exactly of uranium hexafluoride gas, which has been enriched by centrifuges. I can explain this in a separate talk. We'll work out this video, this crazy problem. I'll be all right. And it's probably worth showing your audience because I can talk back and forth between this Iran has these devices called centrifuges. They're tubes that are spinning at a fantastic speed. Uh, the centrifuges are spinning at speeds like, um, 60,000 or 70,000 revolutions per minute. That's tremendous speed. So for example, if you had one of these spinning, uh, that maybe, uh, 20 centimeters in diameter, If you had a flea, if you had a flea on the outside shell, it would cause half a kilogram of lateral force just from the centrifugal. So these things, these are very difficult to build. These must be built to extraordinary mechanical precision. And Iran has figured out how to do this. Now, These centrifuges can be put in what's called a cascade. That is to say, you have centrifuges, they put out, uh, you know, one centrifuge puts its enriched uranium into another centrifuge and that puts it into another centrifuge. I can show you what, what the cascades that Iran uses are. They, they have a— we know that they're 174, uh, centrifuges in a cascade. And I worked out— I can show you the actual configuration. I worked that out on my own, so I can show to your audience what the configuration looks like. And, um, Iran took natural uranium and enriched it to 60% uranium-235. Now, that sounds like it's not close to 90%, which you need for weapons-grade, but that's, that's a false impression. Let me explain how the enrichment process works, you know, conceptually. It's a conceptual thing. Imagine I have water and sugar mixed in, in a, in a pan, and I'm boiling the water off because I want, I want to make a concentrate. I want to eventually get the to all sugar, uranium-235 in this case. So let's say I go 10 minutes and I boil a certain amount of water off, so I go to 11% sugar. Another 10 minutes, I go to 13 or 14% sugar because I'm boiling, I'm boiling the same amount of water off a smaller total amount of water. So each time the total amount of water gets smaller, when I boil the same amount off, Concentration of sugar accelerates. So when I get to 50%, I only need one more stage to get to 100% in it, for this analogy. So it turns out that you need about, you need about one, one-tenth, roughly one-tenth or or one, roughly a tenth or so, the amount of enrichment capacity to go from 60% to weapons-grade uranium.

90%.

Yeah. So this 60% enriched uranium is available to Iran almost instantly because if they have any centrifuges at all, and they surely have centrifuges, we know that they had parts for centrifuges that they haven't even used because they've been manufacturing centrifuges. So it's impossible to imagine that they don't have several cascades that are capable of enriching the uranium within a few weeks.

Yeah.

And if they have more than that, it's, it's a shorter time. So Iran is poised to produce nuclear weapons within weeks if they haven't done it already, and the facility they would need to produce it. You need large facilities to get from 0.7% uranium to 60%. Those are— those require long times, large amounts of centrifuges. But once you're close to the end, you only need a very small amount of centrifuges. And Iran is now there. So, so if you had a, uh, 150 square meter area, you know, cave, you know, underground hallway built underground, uh, you could have all the centrifuges you need and all the material and all these special equipment you need to convert the uranium hexafluoride to uranium metal and machine the metal into nuclear weapons parts. And, and the nuclear weapon you would have would be of a type that's an assembly type of nuclear weapon. You would not need a complex explosion implosion device. You would simply need to have a spherical device and insert a plug of uranium. That's much simpler to do. You would not even have to test this. As a nuclear device. So you could use this weapon the first time without ever having tested it. So Iran is in a strong position to, to produce a threat that it could, could attack with a nuclear weapon. And I can discuss that in slides in the next talk.

So will it be fair— I know we're getting closer to time because I'm keeping an eye on time. Yeah, one last question quickly here. Should we consider Iran now a nuclear— undeclared nuclear power?

Iran must be considered an undeclared nuclear weapon state. If you were a political leader in a confrontation with Iran, you would be absolutely reckless to assume that Iran could not respond with nuclear weapons. Absolutely reckless. You would have to assume that Iran is a nuclear whether or not they declared it, because they have the capacity. They even have the capacity if you attack them and they had not taken the final step, they could attack you several weeks afterwards, unless, you know, because you can always build things deep enough down underground, especially if it's a small facility, and you can hide small facilities. Yeah, you know, we have no idea where Iran's 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium hexafluoride are. They, they— that is the key. They took that out. They saved that. Having saved that, they had— they saved their capability. I mean, they needed these other technologies, but they already have them copiously. Yeah, so they copiously have the other technologies they need. What they needed is this precious 60% enriched uranium, and they haven't. And it's no longer under observation by the International Atomic Energy Agency because it's corrupted anyway.

That agency is corrupt.

The agency, the agency violated its terms of trust.

Yeah, so they shouldn't allow them.

So, so from the point of view of Israel and the United States who have been concerned about Iran being a nuclear weapons state, both those countries are much worse off with regard to them. Iran has to be considered a nuclear weapons state at this point, whether or not they declare so.

Yeah, in this case, the US and Israel will have to think twice now about attacking Iran again.

Well, I hope so.

That's the way I see it.

Well, they could attack—

yeah, I know you need to go because you have your other appointments. I don't want—

I apologize to your audience because—

No worries, no worries. They understand.

There are slides I think that would help them, and we could talk a little bit more about these missiles in a way that I think, uh, could be also very helpful to you.

Well, we will do this next time, I'm sure. You guys, I'll be very happy to— Hey guys, would you want to see Dr. Postol back here? Please just answer in chat.

Well, if you don't, that's okay too. I have no ego involved in this.

No, no, because we still— I need to ask you about—

I have no ego involved Yeah, I need to ask you about Poseidon.

I need to ask you about US defense capabilities and all that stuff.

Yeah, we can talk about it quite a lot about that.

So, Ted, on behalf of the community, I want to say thank you for carving out time for us here. We truly appreciate your knowledge, and I look forward to seeing all of you.

All of you take care and be well.

Thank you very much, Ted. See you later. Bye-bye. Yeah, guys, he— the Yeah, Ted is— he has some other engagements. He already informed me about it, but we'll have him back here when he will detail for us like the ideas of the idea of US missile defense capabilities, which to my knowledge, he's much more qualified than I am to talk about this because that's his background. And so far, based on what I did, excuse me, as far as reading the analysis that's been out there, that the US has no chance, for example, of defending against the DF-5, the Chinese, or the, the, the, uh, uh, the Russian, uh, uh, and the Chinese hypersonics. We have no capability of defending against that. So makes you just wonder now, if when Iran officially, officially deploy that in service, the US is going to have to think now twice, like I said earlier. Think twice about attacking Iran again. Israel will have to think twice about it because Israel— Iran will not hold back in literally, you know, obliterating whatever needs to be obliterated. In that case, of course, excuse me, the possibility of Israel resorting to nuclear— Iran is not going to hold back either. And we all know what it means. Nobody wants to see that, of course. But again, the US and Israel cannot be just intimidating Iran or any other country for that matter. I'm already hearing now, excuse me, conversation about, well, we're gonna have to defend Taiwan. We're gonna have to put a nuclear umbrella in Taiwan. Where are we getting with all this? Where are we going with all this? That was the whole reason for why China went ahead with the public, uh, the public announcements of its DF-5. The testing and released the information about it. Usually the Chinese will not disclose this kind of information, and yes, they did. And I saw the trajectory of where the missile landed in the Pacific. So, uh, and again, it was about 11,500 kilometers, which means what? It can reach the mainland. And this is, uh, and I'm gonna have, uh, uh, uh, Dr. Postol come back here with the slides and all and share with us, really, because we need to have information from an expert. And like he said, a lot of people calling themselves analysts and all, but they cannot sort of provide an accurate assessment of where things are. Dr. Postol has been on the ground. He was an advisor to the Pentagon. He was an advisor to the, the, the Naval Chief of Operations. That's a part of JSOC, so to those who are familiar with the military terminology. Uh, we'll have him back here and we'll share more knowledge about— I know I saw a question from one of you guys. My apologies, couldn't get to it. Oh yeah, that was a question from Matt. I'll make sure to ask him next time. Uh, I, I can't answer that one. That is not my area. But I take this opportunity also to say thank you to Michael, uh, Darlenpo, for becoming a YouTube member. Truly appreciate your support. Hope you guys enjoyed listening to Dr. Uh, Postoh here. And once again, as I said, I will have him back here. Uh, I'll coordinate with him. I'll, I'll give him a call. I have his direct number and we'll talk, and I'll have him here on the channel for you guys too. This is what this channel is all about. So, uh, to those who are aware of my upcoming Asia trip, this is the link of, uh, if you want to support the, uh, my upcoming trip to Asia, you're free to do so should you decide to do that. Let me put the link for you in the chat box, and I greatly appreciate your support on that. I'm also want to share with you the link to the channel if you are interested in supporting the channel as well. I will be very, very grateful to you for that. And you all know, you all know the type of information that I bring to you, the type of analysis that I do for you. It's not, uh, mainstream media. It's not going to do that. You all know this. I don't need to beat the dead horse about this stuff. Uh, and the last thing is, uh, regarding my speaking engagements here, uh, to those who might be interested in, uh, if you know someone might be interested in having a speaker that addresses the geopolitical risks and international security aspects of it, I'll be happy to do that. There's the link for my speaking engagements. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for my conversation with Larry Johnson. We will be talking about— we'll be talking about the reckless and irresponsible decision of Donald Trump regarding the movements of nuclear submarines near Russia's border, which is irresponsible., uh, to do so. I'm not saying about being scared or whatever, that's not the point. It's about being pragmatic, and, uh, Donald Trump doesn't have any of that logic anyway. Anyway, we'll be talking tomorrow to Larry about this one, so make sure to tune in at 12, uh, 12 o'clock, uh, Central Standard Time. As always, remember, geopolitics impact your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, bye-bye.