New York [US], June 28: The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs at one of Iran's largest nuclear sites last weekend for a variety of reasons.
Isfahan nuclear facility too deep
According to CNN on June 28, citing informed sources, US B2 bombers dropped more than a dozen bunker-busting bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities. However, the US was only attacked by submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles at the Isfahan facility.
The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs at one of Iran's largest nuclear sites last weekend for a variety of reasons.
Isfahan nuclear facility too deep
According to CNN on June 28, citing informed sources, US B2 bombers dropped more than a dozen bunker-busting bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities. However, the US was only attacked by submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles at the Isfahan facility.
In addition, Iran is believed to be moving uranium between tunnels in Isfahan. Jeffrey Lewis, a weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies (USA), told CNN that commercial satellite imagery shows Iran has access to tunnels in Isfahan.
"There was a moderate number of vehicles present in Isfahan on June 26 and at least one of the tunnel entrances had been cleared by mid-morning on June 27. If Iran's (highly enriched uranium) stockpile was still in the tunnel when Iran sealed the entrances, it may now be elsewhere," Lewis said.
Additional satellite imagery taken by Planet Labs on June 27 shows the tunnel entrance was open at that time, Lewis said.A preliminary assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency ( DIA ) noted that above-ground structures at the nuclear sites had sustained moderate to severe damage. Such damage could make it difficult for Iran to access any remaining underground stockpiles of enriched uranium, according to CNN.
However, the DIA report also suggested that Iran may have moved some enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. US President Donald Trump on June 27 affirmed that nothing was moved from Iran's three nuclear sites before the US military operation.
"These attacks did a lot of damage to those three facilities. But Iran still has the knowledge to rebuild a nuclear program . And if they still had the enriched material, the centrifuges , and if they still had the ability to move those centrifuges very quickly into what we call the waterfall, we wouldn't have slowed that program down for years. We would have slowed it down for months," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN.
The goal is not to eliminate uranium.
US officials believe that Isfahan's underground structures contain nearly 60% of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium - which Tehran would need to produce nuclear weapons.
Recently, a secret meeting was held for US officials chaired by General Dan Caine , US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth , US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Ratcliffe.
Here, Mr. Ratcliffe said the US intelligence community assessed that most of Iran's enriched nuclear material was buried in Isfahan and Fordow, according to CNN.
Shortly after the US raid on Iran on June 22, an initial assessment by the DIA said the attack did not destroy core components of Tehran's nuclear program, including enriched uranium.
In secret discussions, Republican officials also acknowledged that U.S. military strikes might not eliminate all of Iran's nuclear material. But they stressed that eliminating Iran's nuclear material was not the goal of the U.S. campaign.
"There is enriched uranium in facilities moving around, but that is not the purpose or the mission," Republican Rep. Michael McCaul told CNN.
"My understanding is that most of the uranium is still there. So we need a full accounting. That's why Iran has to come to the table with us directly, so that (the International Atomic Energy Agency) can account for every ounce of enriched uranium that's there. I don't think it's going to be shipped out of Iran, I think it's going to be shipped to facilities," said Michael McCaul.
"The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain aspects of their nuclear program. Those aspects have been eliminated. Removing nuclear material was not part of the mission," Republican Rep. Greg Murphy told CNN.
Similarly, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said: "I don't know where the 900 pounds (408.23 kg) of highly enriched uranium is. But it's not part of the targets there."
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
