Washington: Israel believes deeply buried stocks of enriched uranium at one Iranian nuclear facility hit by the US military are potentially retrievable, a senior Israeli official said.
And the agency that built the US “bunker buster” bombs dropped on two other nuclear sites said Thursday that it is still waiting for data to be able to determine if those munitions reached their targets. Both developments widen the views on the damage from last month’s strikes, when the United States inserted itself in Israel’s war in a bid to eliminate the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful.
President Donald Trump is adamant that the US strikes “obliterated” the three Iranian nuclear facilities it targeted. International assessments and an initial US intelligence assessment have been more measured, with the US Defense Intelligence Agency saying in a preliminary report that the strikes did significant damage to the Fordo, Natanz and
Isfahan sites, but did not destroy them.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe has since told skeptical US lawmakers that American military strikes destroyed Iran’s lone metal conversion facility.