Nicole Grajewski | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Whether Operation Midnight Hammer effectively curbs the proliferation threat from Iran hinges on two interlinked factors: Tehran’s domestic political resolve to curb any weapons-development trajectory and the ability of diplomatic efforts to reestablish rigorous safeguards backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Absent both, the strike’s tactical effectiveness will lead to little more than a temporary pause—delaying rather than preventing the next confrontation over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Ankit Panda | Financial Times
The United States’ decision to entangle itself in Israel’s war against Iran comes at a fateful moment for the global nuclear order. Contrary to US President Donald Trump’s celebration of a “spectacular military success,” the prospects of an indefinitely non-nuclear Iran have diminished significantly — with dire implications for halting the spread of nuclear weapons… This moment will require others to stand for a fraying global nuclear order before the remaining pillars collapse entirely.
Jane Darby Menton | Foreign Policy
On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump suggested that U.S. and Israeli military operations had effectively closed the Iran nuclear file… Although Trump has questioned whether a new nuclear deal is necessary, in reality, deft diplomacy will be needed both to facilitate peace and to prevent metastatic uncertainty about Iran’s residual capabilities from spawning crises for years to come. Such negotiations are rarely straightforward, especially with Tehran. Unfortunately, recent events have also undermined many of the tools and institutions that the United States and others have historically relied on to offset nuclear risks.
Laurence Norman and Dov Lieber | The Wall Street Journal
When Israel’s attacks on Iran began before dawn on June 13, explosions shattered the homes of some of Iran’s top scientists, killing nine people who had worked for decades on Tehran’s nuclear program. All nine were killed in near-simultaneous attacks to prevent them from going into hiding, according to people familiar with the attacks… The killings were the culmination of 15 years of efforts to wipe out one of Iran’s most prized assets—the top cadre of scientists who worked on a secret nuclear-weapons-related program that Iran had pursued at least until 2003.
Jonathan Tirone | Bloomberg
Iran is said to be cutting off communication with key United Nations watchdog officials, deepening uncertainty over the status of its nuclear program and introducing additional ambiguity to the diplomatic showdown with Washington. After formally ending inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency last week, Iranian nuclear-safety regulators have stopped taking class from the Vienna-based agency, according to two officials who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive information.
Francois Murphy and John Irish | Reuters
The U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear sites creates a conundrum for U.N. inspectors in Iran: how can you tell if enriched uranium stocks, some of them near weapons grade, were buried beneath the rubble or secretly hidden away?... IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday it was highly likely the sensitive centrifuges used to enrich uranium inside Fordow were badly damaged. It's far less clear whether Iran's 9 tonnes of enriched uranium - more than 400 kg of it enriched to close to weapons grade - were destroyed. Western governments are scrambling to determine what's become of it.
Patrick Sykes | Bloomberg
Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom Corp. is in talks to sell a 49% stake in the $25 billion power plant it’s building in Turkey. Discussions are currently underway with Turkish and foreign investors, Anton Dedusenko, chairman of the board at the Rosatom subsidiary responsible for the Akkuyu plant, told Bloomberg in an interview on the sidelines of the Nuclear Power Plants Expo & Summit in Istanbul.