LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the U.S. military is prepared to carry out whatever President Trump decides regarding the conflict between Israel and Iran. Testifying before senators yesterday, Hegseth, like the president, declined to offer specifics on a potential U.S. strike. But some U.S. military assets are already in place. Michael Knights is with us to talk this out. He's a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and has spent years studying Iran, Israel and U.S. strategy in the region. Good morning, and thanks for being on the program.
MICHAEL KNIGHTS: My pleasure.
FADEL: So is it in the U.S.'s interest to get involved in this direct conflict between Iran and Israel?
KNIGHTS: I think the question is whether it's necessary. If the president decides that it's necessary to remove Iran's last major stocks of highly enriched uranium and its ability to turn those into weapons-grade material, someone has to go down into the deeply buried facilities at Fordo and Natanz and either remove that stuff physically - could be commandos, could be U.N. inspectors - or somebody has to, you know, drop a bomb on those facilities and permanently remove them. And at present, the only military power in the world that has a chance at doing that is the U.S. Air Force, using its massive ordnance penetrator.
FADEL: So Israel, you're saying, wouldn't be able to take out Iran's nuclear program, as it says it wants to do, without the U.S.
KNIGHTS: If the mechanism is to drop a bomb on Fordo and Natanz underground facilities, then Israel will need probably - almost certainly will need the U.S. massive ordnance penetrator. And that means it may well need one of the very heavy bombers that we use to deliver that munition. Now, there's always innovative options. If you're Israel, you know, there's many ways that you can possibly destroy those facilities, and certainly do them a lot of damage, without drilling down into them with a big bomb. But if you want to be sure, and if you want to actually remove the highly enriched uranium, you know, then maybe a commando operation is an option. Something like Fordo is actually not that big. It's about the same square footage as a major box, you know, retail store or the White House. So, you know, if you do it properly, you can potentially get inside that facility.
FADEL: You said the question is, is it necessary? I mean, U.S. intelligence has not found that Iran is close to building a nuclear bomb, as we heard from Tulsi Gabbard back in March. We also heard from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency on CNN recently that Iran's - Iran had carried out violations of its commitments to the agency, but they had no proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon. So is there justification militarily for Israel's war or future U.S. involvement here?
KNIGHTS: Well, the International Atomic Energy Agency, you know, is clear about what it doesn't know. Or at least it knows that there's much it doesn't know, because the inspection access has not been what it wanted it to be. That's why the board of governors criticized Iran so heavily right ahead of this Israeli strike. And that's why the European Union are considering United Nations snapback against Iran. It's because everybody has very severe concerns that we've essentially lost continuity of knowledge on how much enriched uranium and centrifuges the Iranians have got and where that is.
Plus, there's also a track record of concealment of military aspects of Iran's nuclear program. And indeed, right after the International Atomic Energy Agency did their statement, Iran threatened to produce a new, secret uranium enrichment facility. And so when you add all of that together, what it means is this - you don't have a piece of paper that says Iran is definitely doing this. But you have serious concern not just in the U.S. and Israel, but also in Europe and in the International Atomic Energy Agency, that...
FADEL: Right.
KNIGHTS: ...There is a weaponization program, you know, and that there is a pattern of concealment by the Iranians.
FADEL: Really quickly, in the last few seconds we have, I mean, a lot of Americans remember the Iraq war - faulty, false intelligence that led to a protected war and regime change that took a lot of American soldiers' lives and a lot of innocent Iraqi lives. And they don't want the U.S. to get involved here, and that includes supporters of this president. Are there parallels right now as Trump weighs getting involved?
KNIGHTS: I know the Iraq case well. I spent parts of six years there. But I'll just say this to you - the reason why Iraq happened was because we lost continuity of knowledge, and the U.N. inspectors disappeared in 1998. We need to keep the inspectors in.
FADEL: Michael Knights is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Michael, thank you.
Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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