Washington, DC – The new media in the United States, citing intelligence assessments, doubted doubt about the assertion of President Donald Trump that Washington’s military strikes “erased” the Iran’s nuclear program.
The Washington Post and NBC News reported that US officials said that only one of the three Iranian nuclear sites – the Fordow installation – targeted by the United States has been destroyed.
Post report, published on Friday, also raised questions about the question of the centrifugal used to enrich uranium at the deepest level of Fordow were destroyed or moved before the attack.
“We certainly cannot say that it was erased,” said an official unidentified in the newspaper, referring to the Iranian nuclear program.
Trump insisted that the American strikes were a “spectacular” success, rushing into all the reports questioning the level of damage they inflicted on the Iranian nuclear program.
An initial assessment of American intelligence, disclosed to several media after the attack last month, said that strikes had not destroyed the key elements of the Iranian nuclear program and only delayed its work.
But the Pentagon said earlier in July than the attacks had degraded the Iranian program from one to two years old.
While Fordow strikes – initially considered the most guarded installation, buried inside a mountain – initially took the scene, NBC News and Washington Post reports suggested that the facilities of Natanz and Isfahan also had deep tunnels.
‘Impenetrable’
The American army has not used huge bunker bombs against the Isfahan site and targeted surface infrastructure instead.
An assistant from the Congress Familier with the intelligence briefings told the post that the Pentagon had assessed that the underground installations of Isfahan were “almost impenetrable”.
The Pentagon responded to the two reports by reiterating that the three sites were “completely and completely erased”.
Israel, who sparked the war by attacking Iran without direct provocation last month, supported the evaluation of the American administration, while threatening other strikes against Tehran if he resumes his nuclear program.
For its part, Tehran did not provide details on the condition of its nuclear sites.
Some Iranian officials said the facilities had suffered significant damage from us and Israeli attacks. But the supreme leader Ali Khamenei said after the war that Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of strikes.
The location and state of highly enriched uranium in Iran are also unknown.
The Iranian nuclear agency and the regulators of neighboring states said they had not detected a radioactivity peak after the attacks, suggesting that strikes did not lead to uranium contamination.
But Rafael Grosi, the leader of the United Nations nuclear guard dog, the IAEA, did not exclude that the uranium containers could have been damaged in the attacks.
“We do not know where this equipment could be or if part of it could have been under the attack during these 12 days,” said Grosi at CBS News last month.
According to Grosi, Iran could resume the enrichment of uranium in “month of month”.
War
Israel launched a massive attack on Iran on June 13, killing several senior military officials, as well as nuclear scientists.
The bombing campaign has targeted military sites, civil infrastructure and residential buildings across the country, killing hundreds of civilians.
Iran responded with missile dams against Israel which left generalized destruction and cost the lives of at least 29 people.
The United States joined the Israeli campaign on June 22, hitting the three nuclear sites. Iran retaliated with an attack of missiles against an air base housing American troops in Qatar.
Initially, Trump said that the Iranian attack had been thwarted, but after satellite images showed damage at the base, the Pentagon admitted that one of the missiles was not intercepted.
“An Iranian ballistic missile had an impact on the Air Udeid air base on June 23, while the rest of the missiles was intercepted by the United States and Qatari air defense systems,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in Tel Aviv Tribune in an email last week.
“The impact has led to a minimum of damage to equipment and structures on the basis. There was no injury.”
After a cease-fire was contacted to end the 12-day war, the United States and Iran have expressed their desire to engage in diplomacy to resolve the nuclear file. But the talks did not materialize.
Iran and the United States periodically held nuclear talks before Israel launched its war in June.
Eu-Iran Talks
During his first mandate in 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, known as the Complete Complete Action Plan (JCPOA).
The agreement has seen Iran reduce its nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions against its economy.
In recent days, European officials have suggested that they could impose “snap-back” sanctions against Iran as part of the agreement that has long been violated by the United States.
Tehran, who began to enrich uranium beyond the limits set by the JCPOA after the American withdrawal, insists that Washington was the part that nixed the agreement, stressing that the agreement recognizes the enrichment rights of Iran.
I had a joint teleconference with E3 FMS & UE HR last night, in which I clearly explained the following points:
It was the United States that has withdrawn from a two -year negotiated agreement – coordinated by the EU in 2015 – not Iran; And it was we who left the negotiation table in June of this year and chose a … pic.twitter.com/nfqdk2hzd4
– Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@Araghchi) July 18, 2025
Friday, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, said that he had interviews with the best diplomats in France, the United Kingdom and Germany – known as the E3 – as well as the high representative of the European Union.
Araghchi said Europeans should put aside “worn threat and pressure policies.”
“It was the United States that has withdrawn from a two -year negotiated agreement – coordinated by the EU in 2015 – not Iran; and it was we who left the negotiation table in June this year and chose a military option instead, not Iran,” said the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs in a social media position.
“Any new cycle of talks is only possible when the other party is ready for a fair, balanced and mutually beneficial nuclear agreement.”
Tehran denies looking for a nuclear bomb. Israel, on the other hand, is widely considered as an undeclared nuclear arsenal.