A satellite picture taken on Thursday shows trucks positioned near the entrance of Iran's Fordow uranium-enrichment site, northeast of the city of Qom.-/AFP/Getty Images
Satellite images of Iran’s Fordow uranium-enrichment site taken on Thursday revealed 16 trucks lined up outside an entrance to the deeply buried facility. A few days later, the site was hit by a dozen bunker-buster bombs dropped from U.S. B-2 stealth aircraft.
The images, taken by Maxar Technologies of Colorado, a space technologies and geospatial intelligence company, triggered speculation that the trucks were carting away cylinders laden with uranium enriched to 60 per cent – not far short of the 90 per cent required to make a nuclear bomb – before an attack the Iranians probably assumed was inevitable. The trucks, of course, could have been carrying other materials – there is no confirmation from the United States, Israel or Iran of the true cargo.
If the trucks were spiriting away enriched uranium to another underground storage site, why were they not hit? The Americans and the Israelis would have had photos of the truck column, too.
Sayed Ghoneim, a retired Egyptian general who runs a geopolitical institute in Abu Dhabi, thinks the United States or Israel feared triggering a radiation disaster if the highly enriched uranium was blown up. “If the enrichment exceeded 60 per cent, and you destroyed that uranium, the radiation would be very dangerous,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Analysis: Strikes on Iran mark an abrupt interventionist turn for Trump
What is known is that the Americans are backing away from their initial claims that Fordow and the rest of Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” as U.S. President Donald Trump said the day after precision-guided bunker-buster bombs, known as GBU-57s, and Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. submarines hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
They are certainly not saying that the uranium enriched to 60 per cent was eliminated, which raises the questions: If the stockpiles still exist, where are they? And could Iran resume nuclear enrichment in spite of the attacks on its nuclear sites?
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked by CBS television’s Face the Nation whether nuclear material was removed from Fordow and the two other nuclear sites, Natanz and Isfahan, that were bombed. “No one will know for sure for days,” he said, adding that “our assessment is we have to assume that there’s a lot of 60-per-cent enriched uranium buried deep underground there in Isfahan.”
On the same day, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not confirm Mr. Trump’s “totally obliterated” claim. They said the early damage assessment showed “severe damage and destruction” and provided no other details.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has estimated that more than 400 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride has been enriched to 60 per cent, which is enough for about 10 nuclear weapons if it were taken to 90 per cent.
The agency has been pleading for a ceasefire so that its inspectors can assess the damage at Iran’s nuclear sites, test radiation levels – so far, there are no reports of leaks – and determine the whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium.
It does not appear that the IAEA will get its wish any time soon. Fordow came under renewed attack on Monday, according to Iranian media. Israel bombed the site and the roads leading to it, implying that the U.S. devastation the day before was not complete.
IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi on Monday told an emergency meeting of the agency’s board of governors in Vienna that the ground-penetrating bombs used by the U.S. Air Force had probably caused “very significant damage” to the site and its vibration-sensitive centrifuges. But he stressed that “no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.”
U.S. strikes on Iran over the weekend did not violate international law, NATO chief Mark Rutte told reporters on Monday ahead of a summit for the military alliance, adding that Iran must not develop nuclear weapons.
Reuters
He pleaded for access to the sites and a return to diplomacy to try to keep Iran’s uranium-enrichment program monitored and curtailed.
“The weight of this conflict risks collapsing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime,” Mr. Grossi said. “But there is still a path for diplomacy. We must take it, otherwise violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels and the global non-proliferation regime that has underpinned international security for more than half a century could crumble and fall.”
His plea became all the more urgent when, on Monday, Abbas Golroo, head of the foreign-relations committee in the Iranian parliament, told the semi-official Tasnim News Agency that Iran now has the right to withdraw from the treaty. He cited the treaty’s Article X, which states that a signatory can bolt if it decides that “extraordinary events” have “jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.”
There is no doubt that the U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites were marvels of warfare technology and planning, and that they inflicted considerable damage. But the extent of the damage was not known by Monday, nor the whereabouts of the enriched uranium.
Some arms-control academics and watchers think the uranium is intact and that the attacks were only partly successful, in spite of Mr. Trump’s boasting.
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at California’s Middlebury Institute, said on X that he believes that Iran has retained the 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent and its “ability to manufacture centrifuges, and one, possibly two, underground enrichment sites.”
If true, the U.S. and Israeli attacks on the sites on Sunday and Monday may only be the opening salvos.