Ten to midnight: Iran's nuclear arms race
The Slow Newscast
Alice Sandelson
4.6 • 894 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to United States and Israel, there's 460 kilograms of enriched uranium that Iran are just ten days away from turning into weapons grade nuclear bomb material. The story of Iran's nuclear arms race is less clear than they make it appear though. It's a tale of espionage, assassinations, and a high-stakes game of bluff.
Credits:
Reporter - Chloe Hadjimatheou
Producer - Matt Russell
Sound Design - Dominic Delargy
Artwork - Blythe Walker Sibthorp
Editor - Jasper Corbett
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Observer. |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, it's Ada here and you're listening to the slow newscast from The Observer. |
| 0:17.6 | As the conflict in the Middle East reaches its seventh week, it's hard not to feel pessimistic. |
| 0:23.4 | That as in the tradition of recent American wars in the region, the legacy of the conflict will cast a long shadow. |
| 0:30.5 | And there's a sense of deja vu. |
| 0:32.8 | The mixed messaging about, well, what the point of it all is. |
| 0:39.5 | If you stop for a second and think, |
| 0:47.1 | what is this war actually about? Can you come up with a clear answer? The Iraq war in 2003 started with a strong premise, disarming Saddam Hussein of the weapons of mass destruction |
| 0:52.6 | that he turned out not to have. |
| 0:55.8 | He was toppled, but the bombs continued to fall. |
| 0:59.0 | And then it was about bringing democracy to the Middle East, |
| 1:02.3 | until it turned into a counter-insurgency operation against Al-Qaeda. |
| 1:07.0 | When the US invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9-11, |
| 1:10.3 | the promise was to rid the world of the |
| 1:12.1 | Taliban and the terrorist groups they harbored. And then, when that wasn't really working, |
| 1:16.9 | it was all about liberating women and girls from oppression at the hands of extreme Islamism. |
| 1:22.5 | And then counterinsurgency again. |
| 1:26.3 | This time around, the original sin of the Iranian regime stretches back decades, |
| 1:31.4 | arguably to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis |
| 1:35.1 | when Iranian students seized dozens of US citizens and held them for over a year in the US embassy in Tehran. |
| 1:43.0 | In this instance, US officials have already given various reasons for the war, an imminent Iranian |
| 1:49.3 | threat, regime change, access to Iran's natural resources and the danger of Iran developing |
... |
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