FT: Enriched uranium is untouched, Iranian official says As questions remain over nuclear capability

After US stealth bombers dropped massive 30,000lb bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s key nuclear sites, president Donald Trump declared that the “key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

However, as US officials carry out damage assessments, doubts remain as to whether Iran’s nuclear programme has been destroyed — or simply moved into smaller, more secretive facilities that would be harder to detect, Caliber.Az quotes Financial Times.

“It comes down to the material and where it is,” said Richard Nephew, a former senior US official who worked on Iran policy in both the Obama and Biden administrations. “On the basis of what we’ve seen at this point, we don’t know where the material is. We don’t have any real confidence that we’ve got the ability to get it any time soon.”

“I think you would be foolish,” he added, “if you said that the programme was delayed by anything more than a few months.”

However, an Iranian regime insider similarly downplayed the impact of the airstrikes, saying it would have been “very naive to keep our enriched uranium in those sites”, and insisted that “the enriched uranium is untouched now.”

The insider further claimed that Iran — which has always insisted its nuclear programme is for peaceful, civilian use — has no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons. However, amid rising tensions with Israel, other Iranian officials have hinted at a possible shift in Tehran’s nuclear doctrine.

According to Nephew, Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium had been held at several sites: Natanz, in central Iran; Fordow, an enrichment facility built deep within a mountain near Qom; and in underground tunnels at the Esfahan site. Once processed, the enriched uranium is cooled and stored in powder form inside large cylinders, comparable in size to water heaters.

Sima Shine, a former Iran specialist at the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, said she is convinced Iran managed to move some of its stockpile and key equipment ahead of the strikes.

“They have enough enriched uranium somewhere, and they took some advanced centrifuges somewhere, in order to enable them to some day go to a nuclear device,” Shine said. “The programme is not destroyed completely, no matter what the Americans say.”

By Sabina Mammadli