A menacing 400-kilogram cache of 60 % enriched uranium, sufficient doubtlessly to construct a most of 10 nuclear weapons, has gone lacking within the wake of final week’s US “bunker buster” assaults in opposition to three central Iranian nuclear services. US Vice President JD Vance instructed American broadcaster ABC Information that the lacking materials exists, heightening fears of Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Reviews, together with these of Israeli officers quoted in The New York Occasions, indicated Iran might need relocated the huge stockpile, in addition to some equipment, days previous to the horrific US strike. Satellite tv for pc pictures taken previous to the US assault revealed a procession of 16 vans parked outdoors the Fordow nuclear facility, an set up constructed deep inside a mountain and considered largely immune to standard missile strikes. These photos led Israel to name on the US to ship its B-2 “Spirit” bombers and GBU-37 “bunker busters” on Sunday.
The highly effective bombs focused Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear services. Publish-attack satellite tv for pc imagery confirmed intensive injury to all three websites, however the vans beforehand seen at Fordow have been conspicuously absent. Whereas the precise contents and vacation spot of the moved materials stay unclear, US and Israeli intelligence strongly suspect it was relocated to a different underground storage facility close to the traditional capital of Isfahan.
Rafael Grossi, director normal of the Worldwide Atomic Power Company, the world nuclear watchdog, stated the lacking uranium was final inspected solely every week previous to Israel’s first strikes in opposition to Iran. Final week, Grossi forcefully appealed to the United Nations Safety Council concerning the “important” want for IAEA inspectors to get again to their key work in Iran as shortly as attainable. He warned that additional navy escalation would solely postpone this “indispensable work” and sharply cut back the possibilities of a diplomatic answer to maintain Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran’s Nuclear Intentions: Contradictory Storylines
Iran has all the time insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceable functions. But Israel’s rationale for its latest missile strikes revolved round assertions that Tehran was approaching a “level of no return” in its supposed quest for nuclear weapons. After the Israeli assaults, Iran threatened to depart the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the keystone of the worldwide system meant to stop nuclear proliferation. Iran’s Deputy International Minister, Takht Ravanchi, strongly dismissed solutions of giving up on this system and declared, “Nobody can inform us what to do.”
The US account of Iran’s standing as a nuclear weapons state has nonetheless been topic to some discombobulation. Final week, a CNN report, revealed after Israel’s first missile strikes, quoted US intelligence saying Iran was not actively in search of nuclear weapons and was a minimum of three years away from having the potential to make one. The intelligence additional indicated that Israel’s missile strikes had solely delayed Iran by a number of months, thanks primarily to the deeply buried location of central analysis services reminiscent of Fordow. Nonetheless, a prime official has allegedly knowledgeable CNN that Iran has all of the substances required for a nuclear weapon.
Including to the confusion, US Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared to contradict her personal earlier testimony earlier than Congress, when she had asserted that Iran was not creating nuclear weapons. On Saturday, she amended her analysis, positing that Iran may make them “inside weeks.” This alteration adopted President Donald Trump publicly rejecting her earlier intel as “fallacious.”
President Trump had beforehand given Iran a two-week deadline to comply with a brand new nuclear safeguard deal. Nonetheless, he initiated the US strikes after intelligence confirmed that Israel alone couldn’t successfully neutralize all Iranian services with out American help.
“We’re not part of it (however) we might presumably.” Trump stated Sunday morning on ABC, simply hours earlier than the US strike, calling on Iran and Israel to return to an settlement “earlier than it’s too late.” Following the profitable assault, Trump acknowledged Iran’s nuclear program was “utterly and completely destroyed” utilizing the “bunker busters” and decoy Tomahawk missiles, celebrating the 37-hour navy marketing campaign by seven B-2 bombers from a Missouri air base.