CNN: US Strikes Didn't Destroy Nukes

A classified preliminary U.S. intelligence report suggested that the Trump administration’s initial assessment of damage to Iran’s nuclear program from U.S. strikes was overblown, CNN reported.

An assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department’s intelligence wing, surveyed the damage from the United States’s B-2 strikes with 30,000-pound bunker-buster munitions and smaller follow-up strikes from Israel’s air force, sources told several outlets. Based on information gathered from a U.S. Central Command assessment, the DIA estimated that the strikes on the nuclear facilities, particularly the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, set Iran’s nuclear program back by less than six months.

The assessment is a far cry from President Donald Trump’s public estimate that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Prior to the attack, analysts were unsure if the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster could penetrate deep enough to destroy the Fordow facility, which is buried deep in a mountain. The preliminary estimate speculated that it could not. The entrances to two facilities were sealed off, and the electrical systems for Fordow were badly damaged, but the main underground facilities did not collapse.

Additionally, the report held that much of Iran’s stockpiled enriched uranium was moved before the strikes to other secret locations. If Iran were able to save most of its stockpiled enriched uranium, it could still make a dash for a crude nuclear weapon relatively quickly, one of the leading fears of Israeli and American policymakers.