- 00:00This is something you’ve called a nightmare scenario for both the Middle East and the wider region. What is the implication of this? Well, we’ve known for a while that Iran has a nuclear program. There are three elements really that add up to a nightmare scenario. First is having enough nuclear material. Now, the IAEA, which is the United Nations nuclear watchdog, has said for a couple of years now Iran has enough nuclear material, uranium to build several nuclear bombs. The second element is enrichment of that material towards bomb grade. And we heard only a couple of months ago from Secretary of State Blinken that Iran was two weeks away from reaching what is called breakout capacity, having enough material enriched to the level that is required for a nuclear weapon. The third piece and this is the crucial piece, is having weapons technology, which is different from enrichment. That is something that the Iranians have been lagging. Now, we know Russia has previously tried to share that technology with Iran going back 20 some years. It was caught out in a secret program back in 2000 to 2003, and then it stopped. But it now looks like Russia. We are hearing officials both on both sides of the Atlantic saying that Russia is now exchanging that weapons technology with Iran in exchange, in return for all the help that Iran has been giving in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Iranian drones and more recently, we have heard of Iranian missiles being shipped to Russia for use in it. Now, if the Iranians get both the material and the capacity to make a bomb, that is a game changer for the Middle East, all of its Arab neighbors. And let’s not forget some of the most important trade routes in the world on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. All of that comes under enormous. It’s already, as we know, very, very unstable. We’ve seen the Houthis have fired off again, missiles. They’ve been shooting at ships in the Red Sea. These are people who are attached to the Iranian regime. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it becomes basically completely disruptive to all of that region and to the larger world economy.
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