2026-03-16
11 分钟For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pierre-Lewis, in for Rachel Feldman.
You're listening to our weekly science news roundup.
Last Wednesday, the International Energy Agency announced that its member countries would release...
400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves to, quote,
address disruptions in oil markets stemming from the war in the Middle East.
This is the largest release in the group's history and the first
since 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Siam senior editor Dan Vergano is here to update us on the conflict and its oil impacts.
Thank you for joining us today.
Good to be here with you.
The United States has recently entered into a military conflict with Iran.
Donald Trump has said part of the rationale for this bombing—
They would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks,
and they would have used it long before this press conference.
You recently wrote an article for Scientific American saying that isn't the case.
And I was hoping you could walk us through, like,
why nuclear experts are saying that Iran was not on the precipice of having nuclear weapons.
So the administration and President Trump have made a number of statements about how soon Iran would have had a nuclear weapon
if they hadn't launched this war.
The thing is, we talked to experts in making nuclear bombs, and they said that that just ain't so.