Iran Likely to Have Moved Nuclear Components Ahead of Fordow Attack: Iranian Nuclear Scientist
Despite the Trump administration's claims, Iran's nuclear program has not been "totally obliterated."
Story by Murtaza Hussain and Aly Afdal Zadeh
After a series of airstrikes ordered by President Donald Trump against three key Iranian nuclear sites on June 22—attacks that Trump claimed “totally obliterated” the facilities—the actual level of damage has become the subject of heated controversy. The question of whether Iran’s nuclear program was really destroyed, or even meaningfully impeded by the attacks, now looks set to define the next stage of conflict between Israel, Iran, and the U.S.
After the bombing, the Trump administration issued a number of self-congratulatory statements touting the success of the attack. “Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said during a Pentagon press conference after the attacks, adding that "the operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant."
Contrary to the quick assertions of total success, military analysts have long maintained that assessing the actual impact of a bombing raid against fortified, underground Iranian nuclear facilities would likely require boots on the ground conducting visual verification themselves, or voluntary confirmation from Iranian authorities doing their own investigation.
The U.S. strikes hit three separate Iranian nuclear complexes located at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow. Of the three, Fordow was the most heavily fortified, built deep inside a mountain in order to be resistant to aerial attacks. The Iranian government has sent mixed messages about the extent of the damage suffered by their nuclear program as a result of the bombing. But Iranian sources with a background in the nuclear program who spoke to Drop Site claimed that the facilities had been built to withstand such bombings, and that preparations had already been made in anticipation of the war to transport sensitive materials to other locations to preserve them from a long-expected U.S. attack.
Mahmoud Reza Aghamiri, an Iranian nuclear engineering professor and former scientist at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) who continues to work as a consultant at the organization, told Drop Site News that Fordow in particular had been evacuated of sensitive materials well prior to the American attacks. “Fordow facility was emptied of centrifuges and fissile material two months before the war,” Aghamiri said. Aghamiri further claimed that sensitive nuclear centrifuges had been dismantled and distributed to five different locations far from the facility.
“Iranian authorities claimed heavy damage to the facility to avoid international scrutiny into the fate of the enriched uranium stored there,” Aghamiri added.
The facilities were targeted with multiple 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) dropped by the U.S. 's B-2 Spirit bomber aircraft. The Israeli military does not possess these aircraft or munitions and direct U.S. involvement was needed to strike the targets. The attacks did verifiable damage to overground facilities related to the program, but the level of damage to fortified layers underground is not visible on satellite imagery.
“The explosions affected the upper and middle infrastructure, while the fortified lower infrastructure remained unaffected, which undermines the credibility of American statements about comprehensive damage,” Aghamiri said about the attack on Isfahan in particular, adding that Iran’s existing stockpile of roughly 460 kilograms of enriched uranium was unaffected by the attacks.
Aghamiri’s claim about the transport of sensitive material out of the targeted sites cannot be verified independently and it is also unclear whether sensitive equipment like nuclear centrifuges could have survived shockwave impacts from U.S. heavy munitions. Other Iranian officials have made mixed statements about the impact of the attacks on their nuclear program, which also included a wave of assassinations that killed up to a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said that the attacks failed to “accomplish anything significant.” In contrast, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Aragchi, stated that, “the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”
But Aghamiri’s comments echo statements made by Mohsen Rezaie, the former chief commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and an advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who told Iranian television after the attacks that government officials had concluded that a war had been coming since March, and had begun moving unspecified nuclear materials to alternative sites before the war.
In the days prior to the attack, satellite footage from Maxar Technologies showed a large number of trucks near the Fordow facility. Some officials speculated that these trucks had been involved in backfilling entrances to the site in order to prevent a rumored Israeli commando operation discussed publicly in the weeks before the attack.
Following leaks of classified intelligence assessments about the bombings, the level of damage became a matter of intense public dispute in the U.S. A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report published after the bombing had claimed that the attack “did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months.” The leaked report was angrily denied by the Trump administration, which issued calls to find and prosecute the leaker. The administration also cited counter claims from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, that U.S. bombing had rendered the nuclear sites “severely damaged” and “inoperable.”
Experts on nuclear proliferation say that the conflicting statements likely represent a dispute over the level of damage done to the underground sites. But they added that the impact of repeated attacks with MOPs, which were designed in part for the purpose of targeting Iran’s nuclear program, likely did do serious damage to their ability to function.
Ankit Panda, an expert on nuclear proliferation and the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, stated that "what the DIA is likely getting at is that the bombing likely didn’t collapse the underground centrifuge halls at Fordow. But what’s important to understand is that it’s still extremely unlikely that the bombing didn’t disable any centrifuges that were there.” He added, “These are extremely delicate, precision-engineered machines—shockwaves or power outages could easily cause them to spin out of control and destroy themselves. So, it’s possible for both things to be true: Fordow may have been disabled as a site for uranium enrichment, even if the facility itself wasn’t completely imploded."
Following the attacks, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine told U.S. senators that the U.S. did not use bunker buster bombs at Isfahan, as facilities at that site were buried so deeply that the munitions would have not affected them. U.S. officials have suggested that Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium, enough to fashion several nuclear weapons if Iranian officials chose, may be buried at Isfahan and Fordow.
But no verification of this has been provided, and concerns have been raised that the easily transportable materials may have been transferred before the war and are still available to the Iranian government. Although facilities associated with the Iranian nuclear program suffered extensive damage, some of which is verifiable from satellite photographs, there is no indication that this damage would put an end to Iran’s nuclear program, or even impede Iran’s ability to develop a weapon using its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium if it chose to do so.
"There are a lot of unknown unknowns—ambiguities about covert facilities and the status of highly enriched uranium. There are doubts about whether the Iranians moved the enriched uranium, but it’s something we have to take seriously,” said Panda. “Think of it this way: these can be a few objects the size of beer kegs. You could throw them in the trunk of a car, and drive them away, but the centrifuges are a different story. They're large, precise instruments that need to be moved with extreme care. At Fordow, if the centrifuges were destroyed, it would likely be easier to rebuild them than to attempt repairs."
Ceased Cooperation
Iranian authorities have taken a defiant stance in the wake of the conflict. Following the U.S. and Israeli attacks on its nuclear sites, the Iranian parliament moved to stop further cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as reportedly banning surveillance cameras required by international monitoring agreements from its existing facilities. In a speech after the war, Hamid Reza Haji Babaei, vice speaker of the Iranian parliament, said that, “The recent 12-day war is a continuation of the 47-year-old hostilities led by the United States against the Iranian nation. The core of this enmity is not about missiles or the nuclear program—it’s about the people of Iran.”
Iranian officials had previously signalled that they had contingencies in place to both retaliate and preserve their nuclear capabilities were a war to break out. In April, Ali Shamkhani, the former head of Iran’s National Security Council and a negotiator in the nuclear talks with the U.S. that the war interrupted, posted on social media that, “The continuation of external threats and Iran being in a state of military attack may lead to deterrent measures, including expulsion of inspectors from IAEA and cessation of cooperation. Transfer of enriched materials to secure locations may also be considered.”
Shamkani was injured in an attempted assassination by Israel on June 13 that targeted him at his home. Initially reported dead, Shamkhani resurfaced days later at public funerals for those killed in the attacks, where he reiterated his message that the nuclear program would continue. “Even assuming complete destruction of the facilities, the game will not end, because the enriched materials, local expertise, and political will still remain. And, now, the political and practical initiative, along with the right to legitimate defense, is in the hands of the party that plays smartly and avoids random firing,” he posted online, adding, “The surprises will continue!”
Rafael Grossi, director of the IAEA, has warned that even with heavy damage to nuclear sites, Iran could restore its enrichment capabilities within a matter of months as it retained its uranium stockpile and technical expertise. “The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi said.
The Iranian government had long resisted weaponizing its nuclear program, instead using the program as a bargaining tool for the removal of Western economic sanctions on the country. Following the attacks, calls have grown inside Iran to withdraw the country from global nonproliferation agreements and potentially develop a weapon as a deterrent in order to protect it from further attacks.
Taghi Azad Armaki, professor of political sociology at Tehran University, told Drop Site that Iran’s response to the U.S. or Israel would be measured in order to allow Iran to “complete its nuclear project” without facing further pressure or attacks.
“Trump’s grandiose statements should be interpreted within the logic of American domestic politics,” said Armaki. “An American president cannot admit failure, especially if he made a unilateral decision without the approval of Congress. Admitting failure would inevitably end his political career.”
Hadi Dalloul, an Iran-based analyst who frequently speaks on behalf of the government on issues related to its nuclear activities likewise denounced the claim that the Iranian nuclear program had been critically damaged by the attacks. “This is inaccurate because Iran possesses sufficient knowledge to manage its nuclear project independently, without needing external support, neither in equipment nor technology,” said Dalloul. “The real loss is the loss of Iranian nuclear scientists. Even though this poses a real challenge, the structure of the Iranian scientific team emphasizes knowledge transfer so the loss of one scientist does not lead to collapse or disruption.”
He added, “A military strike will remain limited in impact no matter how severe.”
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
Iran needs a nuclear weapon. Then the US and maybe Israel would leave it alone.
What kind of hypocrits are we, who have over 200 nuclear weapons, to tell Iran it cannot have any?
Of course, it would be best if all countries got rid of all their nuclear weapons.
The ancient Greek tragedian, Aeschylus, famously said "Truth is the first casualty of war." We best take the public statements from Trump/Hegseth and Khamenei with a spoonful of salt.
From Murtaza's comprehensive report, a few things seem are likely true:
1. Iran's nuclear program has been damaged, but not decimated,; it can rebuild in a few months;
2) Israel will continue its assassinations and periodic bombings of Iran, and try to lure Trump into exerting American military muscle.
Meanwhile some questions remain unanswered because they haven't been asked:
1) Israel has acquired nuclear weapons without signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and demands Iran cannot do what Israel did -- on what basis?
2) Trump abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal signed by Iran and all 5 U.N. Security Council members, and now has the temerity to bomb them and force them to agree to a lesser deal. Does Trump really expect them to do that?
If we are a democratic and open society, we ought to be loudly asking these questions.
We look to Drop Site and other independent media to raise such questions because the corporate media is mum. AIPAC got their tongue.