Day: June 22, 2025

Now that US Bombs Have Fallen on Iran, What We Know and Don’t Know About Iran’s Secret Nuclear Program

We will begin with an assessment from a leading expert on nuclear proliferation on what damage has been done to Iran’s nuclear program by the US bombing of Iran in Operation “Midnight Hammer” which involved 125 US Aircraft including B2 bombers that dropped 14 “bunker buster” bombs on Fordow and Natanz along with cruise missiles that struck Isfahan. Although VP Vance says “we are not at war with Iran” the Iranians say “the US has crossed ‘a very big red line.'” Joining us to discuss the extent of Iran’s secret nuclear program in terms of what we know and what we don’t know is David Albright, a physicist and founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C. He regularly conducts scientific research and has written numerous assessments on secret nuclear weapons programs throughout the world. From 1992 to 1997 he cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team and was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. He has served as a consultant or contractor to the Environmental Policy Institute, the Congressional Research Service, the International Task Force on Prevention of Nuclear Terrorism, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Prior to that, he was a Senior Staff Scientist at the Federation of American Scientists and a member of the research staff of Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies and he is the author of Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies.

Trump, the Triumphant and Imperial President at Home and the Emperor Abroad 

Then, with Trump and Netanyahu boasting triumph and heading for the NATO summit in The Hague on Tuesday, we will examine how we already have a dictator’s foreign policy with Trump governing today in the wake of the near-complete dismantling of checks and balances on the executive branch. Congress has granted the “imperial presidency” more and more power over foreign affairs over the years and now Democratic calls to invoke the War Powers Act are falling on deaf ears while the Supreme Court has been reluctant to provide any meaningful restraints having given Trump blanket immunity. Joining us is Elizabeth Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of The Insiders’ Game: How Elites Make War and Peace. We will discuss her article at Foreign Affairs “Imperial President at Home, Emperor Abroad.”