Strikes only set back Iran's nuclear programme by months: US intel

A US intelligence report suggests that Iran's nuclear programme has been set back only a few months after US strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

The report issued by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) on Monday, 23 June contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's nuclear facilities.

According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorised to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The US has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear programme entirely, but some experts fear that the US strikes — and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities — could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon.

The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran's highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the US strikes and survived, and it found that Iran's centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people.

At the deeply buried Fordow uranium enrichment plant, where US B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found.

The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo.

The White House pushes back

The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong,” and Trump defended his characterisation of the strike's impact.

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“It was obliteration, and you'll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as “preliminary” and “low confidence”, while secretary of state Marco Rubio said “these leakers are professional stabbers”.

The CIA and the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation's 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the defence department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the US strikes.

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from US intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday night that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the US assessment was shared with reporters.

“It's treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel.

Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran “totally destroyed” and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities.

Netanyahu said in a televised statement on Tuesday that, “For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed... we brought to ruin Iran's nuclear programme.” He said the US joining Israel was “historic” and thanked Trump.

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday. Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear programme as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites.

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Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fuelled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location.

And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use.

The US and others assessed prior to the US strikes that Iran's theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

US vice-president J.D. Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kg of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the US has cut off Iran's ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon.

“If they have 60 per cent enriched uranium, but they don't have the ability to enrich it to 90 per cent, and, further, they don't have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear programme, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term,” Vance said.

Approximately 42 kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90 per cent, according to the UN nuclear watchdog.

What experts say

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi informed UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on 13 June — the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — that Tehran would “adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials”.

American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on 19 June, three days before the Americans struck.

Subsequent imagery “revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the US airstrikes,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. “We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation.”

Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran's enriched uranium stockpile. “It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60 per cent out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck,” said Eric Brewer, a former US intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage.

Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the UN nuclear watchdog.

Iran also announced on 12 June that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites.

After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan's facilities, including tunnels, could become operational.

But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran's control, this offers Tehran “a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert programme and for getting a bomb”, Brewer said.

Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy centre, said “if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges,” it can “build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60 per cent gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels.”

But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear programme, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.