CNN
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President Donald Trump has declared that Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility has been “completely and completely wiped out” following this weekend’s air attack, but the US appears to have thwarted the most powerful bombs against one of the three facilities included in its operations to raise questions about whether it has finished work.
In Isfahan, where nearly 60% of Iran’s already abundant nuclear stockpile of nuclear material is believed to be stored underground, US officials said the US submarines have appeared on a site with Prime Minister Dan Kane’s chairman, Tomahawk Cruise Missiles.
However, unlike two other Iranian facilities that targeted operations, the B-2 bombers did not drop a large “bunkerbuster” bomb at the Isfahan facility, sources told CNN. Damage to the facility appears to be limited to ground structures, according to Jeffrey Lewis, an arms expert and professor at the Middlebury International Institute, who has carefully reviewed the strikesite’s commercial satellite images.
Even if the US succeeds in destroying Fordow’s Iranian facility, the obvious survival of Isfahan, another underground site that housed the centrifuges needed to enrich the uranium hit with 12 bunkerbusters, raised questions about whether Trump “achieved the goal of halting the world’s first state sponsors.
“This is an imperfect strike,” Lewis said. “If this is all there is what remains here. The entire 60% uranium stockpile was kept in a tunnel untouched by Isfahan.”
Satellite images taken by Airbus have caused significant damage to the Isfahan site, showing the underground section of the facility being attacked, according to the Institute for International Science and Security. However, there is a layer of tunnels at the facility, so it is unclear how far the damage will go.
When reaching out to the comments, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses told CNN “There are no additional items to share at this time.”
Vice President JD Vance told ABC News, “On Sunday, this week, the administration is planning on working in the coming weeks to ensure we do something with that fuel, and that’s one of the things we’re talking to Iranians.”
“What we know is that they no longer have the ability to turn highly enriched uranium stockpiles into weapon-grade uranium. That was really the goal here,” Vance added.
“We enrich uranium to the point of nuclear weapons. That’s what the president stopped last night.”
However, multiple sources familiar with the latest US intelligence agency at both sites and the Trump administration’s purpose that told CNN that Isfahan’s underground facility (presumably still unharmed) needs to be addressed to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.
And on Thursday, UN nuclear observers said Iran is building a new nuclear enrichment plant in Isfahan.
The Iranians “have the materials but still have the ability to make centrifuges and still have at least one huge underground centrifuge facility where they can install centrifuges,” Lewis added. “So it’s not over.”
It remains unclear why US military planners opposed the use of large ordinance in Isfahan, or bunkerbusters officially known as MOPs. The bomb is designed to penetrate deep underground, and sources say the tunnel beneath Isfahan is even deeper than the tunnels in two other locations.
But even before the strike took place, some US officials raised arguing questions about whether MOP could even destroy deeper tunnels.
There were several questions about whether US bunkerbusters could destroy the underground section of Fordau, which was the focus of the administration’s operational plan, but several sources familiar with the discussion informed that the possibility of successful doing the same thing in Isfahan was even bigger.
In Fordow, the depth of the facility almost certainly requires several mops that crash into almost exactly the same location. This is usually a high order, except that Iranian air and missile defenses are functionally disabled.
But “Isfahan is a challenge,” another source familiar with the latest US intelligence news agency told CNN.
“The tunnel at Isfahan is very deep,” Lewis said. MOP is designed to handle sites like Fordow. “If they put something deeper, we have to design a new bomb or use nuclear weapons.”
CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.