Five days after the United States targeted three Iranian nuclear sites, intense debate continues about their impact in terms of damage to the facilities.
U.S. President Donald Trump has dismissed media reports citing intelligence estimates that the American bombing had done only minimal damage, and that the Iranians had been able to move uranium from the sites before the strikes.
“Nothing was taken out of [the] facility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, adding it “would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”
This followed a statement late Wednesday by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who said “credible intelligence” showed Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan had been severely damaged and that it would take years — not months — to rebuild several key facilities.
NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD HAS THE WEAPONRY OR THE CAPABILITIES THAT THE UNITED STATES HAS. pic.twitter.com/7lqcsUFe3a
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) June 26, 2025
Ratcliffe said his statement was partially based on new intelligence from a “historically reliable and accurate source.”
In a live address to the nation on Saturday in the immediate aftermath of the strikes, Trump proclaimed Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a press conference Thursday that President Trump’s ‘decisive military action’ ended the ’12-day war’ between Israel and Iran.
The conference followed reports suggesting the damage was not as extensive as the Trump administration had been claiming.
Part of the debate centers around the question over whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium now.
Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, a program director at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, says it’s unclear what has become of Iran’s 400 kilograms of uranium enriched at 60 per cent.
“We really don’t know where that material is,” she told CBC News via Zoom.
“Did all of it survive the attacks? Did some of it survive the attacks? We don’t know, and right now, Iran is not providing that information.”
Tehran, which acknowledges that its nuclear installations were “badly damaged,” claims to have moved its enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes on the weekend.
Some media accounts citing satellite imagery say that on June 19, there were16 cargo trucks at the entrance of the deeply buried Fordow nuclear site. Three days later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, it was hit with multiple bombs, called Massive Ordnance Penetrators, each of which weighed 13,000 kilograms.
Before the U.S. became directly involved in the strikes, Israel said it had been targeting Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure, along with security officials and scientists, since June 13.
Thank you, Mr. President. pic.twitter.com/oxHBnXLEB4
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) June 26, 2025
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says Iran told the UN nuclear agency it had taken special measures to protect its stockpile.
“Given the power of these devices and the technical characteristics of a centrifuge, we already know that these centrifuges are no longer operational, because they are fairly precise machines: there are rotors, and the vibrations [from the bombs] have completely destroyed them.”
Still, there have been conflicting reports about just how much damage was sustained by Iran’s nuclear program.
President Trump came down hard on The New York Times and CNN, calling their reports of minimal damage to the sites as fake news.
The Financial Times on Thursday published a report saying European governments had assessed that Iran’s uranium stockpile had been redistributed to sites outside of Fordow before the attack.
In his first public comments since the war began, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also said on Thursday that Trump overstated the results of the strikes.
By his account, the US bombing campaign “did nothing significant” to Iran’s nuclear facilities.
While Thursday’s briefing with Hegseth offered details about the weaponry used in the June 22 attacks, analysts appear to be seeking more evidence to justify the Administration’s claim of total obliteration of the sites.
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Iftikhar Ali is a veteran Pakistani journalist, former president of UN Correspondents Association, and a recipient of the Pride of Performance civil award
