Washington, DC – The Pentagon has announced that the United States military strikes against Iran have found the country’s nuclear program for one to two years, an assessment following President Donald Trump’s statements that the program was “erased”.
Defense Ministry spokesman Sean Parnell said on Wednesday that the three Iranian nuclear installations targeted by Washington had been destroyed, echoing the president’s remarks. He praised the strikes as a “daring operation”.
“We have degraded their program from at least one to two years,” Parnell told journalists. “Intel assessments within the ministry evaluate this.”
Since the United States sent a group of B-2 stealth bombers in Iran on June 21, Trump has always been unleashed to all the suggestions that the attacks have not destroyed the country’s nuclear installations.
He argued that Iran’s nuclear program was “erased as no one ever seen before”.
An initial assessment of American intelligence, disclosed to several media last month, said that strikes had not destroyed the key elements of the Iranian nuclear program and only delayed its work of months.
For his part, Tehran was shy to 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 chief Ali Khamenei said last week that Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of strikes.
There was no independent assessment of the consequences of American attacks, which is part of a 12 -day war between Israel and Iran. Visual analyzes via satellite images cannot fully grasp the scope of damage on underground sites, in particular the largest enrichment installation in the country, Fordow.
Another persistent mystery is the location and condition of stocks containing the highly enriched uranium of Iran.
The Iranian nuclear agency and the regulators of neighboring states said they had not detected a radioactivity peak after the attacks, as expected of these strikes.
But Rafael Grossi, head of the United Nations nuclear guard dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not exclude that the containers holding uranium 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 week.
“So, some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved.”
Satellite images have shown that trucks leave the Fordow before the United States strikes.
Grossi has also said that Iran could again enrich uranium in “month of month”. Enrichment is the process of improving the purity of radioactive uranium atoms to produce nuclear fuel.
The targeted installations in the United States were under constant surveillance of the IAEA. But now, the Iranian nuclear program is in the dark, far from the examination of international inspectors.
After the war, the Iranian Parliament adopted a law suspending cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency’s failure to condemn American and Israeli attacks against the country’s nuclear facilities.
Geneva conventions prohibit attacks on “installations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dikes and nuclear electricity production stations”.
Before the start of the war on June 13, Tehran said that he had obtained Israeli documents that show that IEA had information in Israel on the Iranian nuclear program – allegations that the agency denied.
Earlier Wednesday, the US State Department called on Iran to allow the IAEA to access its nuclear program.
“It is … unacceptable that Iran has chosen to suspend cooperation with the IAEA at a time when it has a second-hand window to reverse the course and choose a path of peace and prosperity,” said spokesperson for the State Department, Tammy Bruce, in a statement.
Israel launched a massive attack on Iran on June 13 without direct provocation, saying that he was preventively aimed at Iran’s push towards a nuclear weapon.
Tehran denies looking for a nuclear bomb. Israel, on the other hand, is widely considered as an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Israeli air strikes during the conflict killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists and family members, as well as senior military officials.
Iran responded with missile dams that left generalized destruction and killed 29 people in Israel.
Ten days after the start of the war, the United States joined the Israeli campaign and bombed Iranian nuclear installations. Tehran, in turn, launched a shot of missiles against an American air base in Qatar, an attack that made no victim.
A few hours later, Trump announced a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. The officials of the two countries described the outcome of the war as a “historic victory”.
Israel also said that the Iranian nuclear program had been destroyed. But Iran insisted that it thwarted Israel’s objectives by maintaining the stability of its government as well as its nuclear and missile programs.
