Sebastian Walker: There wasn't a huge amount of coverage beyond the initial period of the war itself. And I think it's partly because the access is so hard. You really don't get very close to these places that were in the headlines. Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan, these nuclear sites that the U.S. bombed in June. So that was really the starting point for us. We managed to get access inside Iran and set out on a journey to try to get as close to examining the extent of the damage as we could and really investigating the impact of these strikes that we've heard so much about.
Patrick Center: What were the challenges?Did the governments, and I say governments, because we had both Israel and the United States involved in this, what were some of the roadblocks that you had to overcome?
Sebastian Walker: Well, extensive. I mean, it's always challenging to operate in Iran. I've reported from there several times, you know, you're always closely monitored, tightly controlled, accompanied by government approved personnel everywhere you go. It's not been a very free reporting environment at all. But this time it was even more so. This was, you know, just a short period of time after the strikes. So very sensitive moments. So, to have an American crew on the ground coming in and kind of going through these sites, these strike sites where bombs fell and assassinating nuclear scientists was just even more scrutinized and we were monitored more than ever before. So yeah, it's a challenging place to have authentic reporting able to be done, but it definitely was eye opening to be able to see these places that we heard about. And we did get to visit sites where on the night of June 13, a series of bombs fell and taking out key people that Israel has said are key members of Iran's nuclear program. So that's kind of the first half of the film is us in these places filming and sending material back to our collaboration partners so that they could analyze and fold into their investigative work to try to understand how much this has set Iran's nuclear program back.
We weren't allowed to access the key sites where the U.S. bombs fell. Those are places that Iran is keeping very much out of public view. They're trying to preserve as much mystery as they can about the impact of these strikes. So, we asked for access to Fordow and Natanz. We did get to journey down to Isfahan, the city of Isfahan, which is where one of the largest nuclear sites is located. But we weren't allowed to get close to the site.We could only film it from afar. The sites we had access to were these strike sites where nuclear scientists were living, apartment blocks in downtown Tehran that on the night of June 13 were hit by almost simultaneous strikes occurring over a very short period of time, taking out key names in Iran's nuclear program. So, we went to three or four of these locations and were able to film and send material back to our collaboration partners.
And you really get an understanding of the scale of those attacks. This is something strategically very different from what Israel has done in the past. There are assassinations that have been carried out in Iran of nuclear scientists as far back as 2007, but they've often been done in a very small-scale, covert, highly complex operation. Whereas this was different in nature. This was large-scale heavy munitions and no covert aspect of this. Israel announced that they'd taken out these scientists. They wanted people to know that these were Israeli strikes that had done this. So, it really kind of speaks to a different political environment in some way, that this was a sea change from what we've seen before, that this campaign of assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran.
Patrick Center: What is the U.S. role in this? There was a major bombing campaign.
Sebastian Walker: Yes. And then on the 10th day of the conflict, the U.S. joined in. So, the U.S. dropped large munitions known as massive ordnance penetrators or MOPs with 30,000-pound bunker busting bombs designed to use the kinetic energy from the vertical fall from the plane that's launching these munitions to burrow deep underground to try to cause damage in these underground chambers.In Fordow, for example, is one of the places that is buried under a mountain range. So, it's hard for conventional weapons to actually cause damage in those places. So, Israel did target nuclear sites as well as these nuclear scientists. But on the 10th day of the campaign, the U.S. joined in, and it was one of the most complex aerial missions the US Air Force has ever carried out. These MOPs were being used in combat for the first time. And the big question is how much damage was caused by these strikes?
So that's something we were exploring on the ground with senior officials from the Iranian government. We managed to speak with Ali Larijani, who is secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, very senior role, basically Iran's top security official and chief nuclear negotiator, and asked him about the big question of how much damage was done to the facilities? How much this has set Iran's nuclear program back? We put a lot of the claims that we heard from the Trump administration to Iranian officials and got responses to that, which you see in the film as well. It's a quite remarkable interview. This was his first interview since the 12-day war to an American outlet. So very kind of significant moment for him to be sitting down and talking about how much damage was done to their nuclear program? How much this had set things back and whether it was going to bring about some kind of change in course?
That's another question everyone has about whether or not this is going to make Iran come to the table, whether this is going to cause a change in thinking about the determination to keep the nuclear program going? And some of the responses to those questions were pretty eye opening. There was a pretty defiant response to that claim from Ali Larijani that essentially the nuclear program cannot be destroyed. And when I asked him about President Trump's claim that the facilities had been obliterated and whether that was true or not, he coyly suggested that we should ask the president himself and didn't want to go much further than that. But I think this is really kind of getting at the question of what's next here, whether Iran is now going to change course?
So, one of the main takeaways from conversations with top Iranian officials who we sat down with in Tehran is that essentially the message was that Iran's nuclear program can never be destroyed. That once you have invented this technology, you can always replace facilities or scientists who've been assassinated, that this is something that we'll always be able to continue. So, there was a kind of defiant tone there from the officials that we met.
And another piece of the reporting that we were able to do on the ground in partnership with our collaboration partners, the Washington Post and Bellingcat, was essentially explore this new activity that's been detected at a nuclear site near Natanz. It's known as Pickaxe Mountain, and this is a site that wasn't bombed by the U.S. or Israel, but where recently there has been activity detected, such as construction vehicles being present, tunneling activity suspected with the excavation being seen to be proceeding, kind of speaks to what's next here and the question of whether these strikes could potentially have just pushed the nuclear program further underground. Now that the I.A.E.A. doesn't have the same kind of access as it used to have, that's going to be a concern for the international community, and it was one of the takeaways from our trip.
Patrick Center: Striking on Iran: The Nuclear Question is currently streaming at pbs.org/frontline. You can also find it at PBS app and also the PBS Passport. Correspondent, Sebastian Walker, all the way from London, thank you so much. T
Sebastian Walker: Thanks for having me.