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Ted Postol: Fraud of Missile Defence Exposed in Iran War (Transcript)

Ted Postols interview @Greater Eurasia Podcast Mar 9 2026

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Editor’s Notes: In this insightful interview, MIT Professor and missile defense specialist Theodore Postol joins Glenn Diesen to provide a critical technical assessment of the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel. Postol argues that modern missile defense systems, such as the Patriot and Iron Dome, are largely ineffective against advanced Iranian missiles and drones that are increasingly supported by Russian and Chinese technology. He also warns of the grave risks associated with nuclear escalation in the region, offering a sobering perspective on the “fog of war” and the reality of modern military capabilities. This discussion serves as a deep dive into the technical disparities and geopolitical stakes defining the current war. (Mar 9, 2026) 

TRANSCRIPT:

Introduction

GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We are joined by Theodore Postol, professor of Science and Technology and National Security at MIT, who is a specialist on nuclear weapons delivery systems, missiles and missile defense, who has also done some work for the Pentagon. So thank you very much for coming back on.

TED POSTOL: Well, my great pleasure for being invited by you.

GLENN DIESEN: Well, I have been looking forward to speaking with you because in this war against Iran, it’s largely a war about missiles and missile defense, essentially who can create the most pain and absorb the most pain, is able to exhaust adversary.

And I thought you are the recipient of this Norbert Wiener award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering all these deceptions which has previously been made about missile defense. So I thought who better to have a critical view, you know, cut through all this fog of war because there is a lot of focus these days on narrative control. So it obscures reality.

And yeah, I wanted to get yours. Well, I guess a good place to start is your overall assessments of this war. I mean, what is that stands out or what is your takeaway?

Iran’s Military Capabilities and the Drone Threat

TED POSTOL: Well, I think you got a fantastic assessment just recently from Larry Wilkerson. But I’ll give you my assessment from my narrow, much narrower, because Larry I think is really broad and has all this experience, but from my much narrower technologist point of view.

So let me caveat my initial discussion by pointing out that I literally have been working night and day to try to keep up with what’s going on. And it takes time to put together slides and videos which I hope I’ll be able to show some that will be helpful. They will try to inform your audience because looking at a video is one thing, knowing what it’s telling you is another.

So let me start out by just saying that from a purely technical point of view, again, not from this much broader and wiser perspective of someone like Larry has on this, it’s very clear that this war is going as someone like I, and more importantly Larry would have guessed. What we’re seeing now is in the initial phases of the war, the United States and Israel are doing tremendous damage to Iran. But of course, Iran is a country of 90 million people and it’s a very cohesive country with all of the internal problems it has. It’s still basically a cohesive culture.

And it doesn’t appear to me that the situation is in any way favoring the outcome that both President Trump and Premier Netanyahu are talking about. That is to say, it hardly seems likely that there will be any collapse of the kind that both these leaders are aiming at.

I have to say though, I’m beginning to become extremely concerned with Netanyahu. I’m going to say it just because I’ve been thinking about it. This man is a homicidal maniac, and this is the kind of homicidal maniac that could use a nuclear weapon at some point.

Iran as a Nuclear Threshold State

So I think perhaps next time I’m on I can remind your audience about the capabilities of Iran as a nuclear weapon state. It is not a non-nuclear weapon state. It is not a nuclear weapon state who has built a nuclear weapon, at least as far as we know. But it is a weapon state that could build a nuclear weapon on very short notice, and it would not be possible to stop them from building a nuclear weapon, even if you were using nuclear weapons on Iran while they were constructing their nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons.

They have enough enriched uranium hexafluoride to construct 10 atomic bombs, which would be much more than enough to finish off Israel as a state. Israel is not a state of 90 million people. It’s 8 or 9 million. It’s got a few large critical cities. And 10 nuclear weapons would be far more than is needed to end Israel as a state.

And there is no way to stop Iran. I could talk a little bit about that at some future time. What you need to do could be easily housed in a tunnel that’s not necessarily especially large, and you could actually do the final enrichment. You need to get weapons grade uranium, and build a nuclear weapon that does not need to be tested. It’s important to understand this is a uranium weapon and it would not need to be tested. It simply is well within the reach of Iran to build these nuclear weapons.

So we need to start thinking about the possibility we could see nuclear weapons used. Now I do not think Iran will use nuclear weapons against Israel first, but I think as this war goes on, the situation is going to continue to deteriorate.

Iranian Ballistic Missile Precision and Drone Effectiveness

We already can see — I’ll show some evidence for this — that the attacks on Tel Aviv and Haifa have been extremely effective, and it looks like the precision of delivery that the ballistic missiles now being used by Iran is higher than what we saw earlier.