Iran’s nuclear reset shows airstrikes may not end ambitions

While Israel targeted top Iranian nuclear scientists to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons knowledge base, Rosemary Kelanic, in a July 2025 interview with the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), notes that Iran has produced a generation of nuclear scientists and technicians numbering in the thousands who understand the technology and can rebuild what was lost in a matter of months.

Importantly, Kelanic points out that the U.S. focus on major sites such as Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan obscures the big picture—that Iran has multiple nuclear facilities that were not hit by airstrikes and that Iran’s nuclear program was designed with dispersion and redundancy from the start to survive such an attack.

Read at Asia Times

Featuring

Rosemary
Kelanic

Director, Middle East Program

Defense Priorities