Washington dropped six so-called bunker busters on three Iran nuclear facilities last week where a 400kg stockpile of uranium – capable of making up to 10 nuclear weapons, the American broadcaster ABC News reported Wednesday, quoting Vice President JD Vance – remains unaccounted.
The uranium that went missing – used by Iran as a strong bargaining chip each time the country chooses to resume negotiations with the US over a possible new nuclear agreement – is 60 per cent enriched. To be made into an nuclear explosive, it must be added with chemicals that would make it have concentration of approximately 90 per cent.
Iran is believed to have secretly transferred the stockpile ( together with some of the equipment ) days before the attack to an undisclosed facility, a claim Israeli officials repeated to The New York Times.
The satellite images of the time prior to the strike of the US revealed the line of 16 tanks out of the Fordow nuclear plant which is constructed within a mountain and most likely resistant to the majority of missile attacks which gave prompts to Israel to request the US to send its B-2 -bombers so called ‘Spirit’ and the GBU-37 so called bunker buster bombs early in the morning on the very next Sunday.
The nuclear sites that were bombed are Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
The trucks were missing though all the three suffered significant damages as revealed by post-attack images.
However, it is open to question, what and where they have been moved, still the US and Israel are convinced that it has been moved to another storage, underground again, this time near the ancient capital of Isfahan.
As Rafael Grossi, chief of the IAEA – the International Atomic Energy Agency, a global nuclear watchdog said it was last checked a week prior to the initial Israeli attack on Iran. Less than a week ago Grossi told the United Nations Security Council that it is now crucial that the IAEA starts the inspections as urgently as possible.
He also told the world that this would only postpone and wear down all the efforts that are necessary to ensure that Iran does not achieve nuclear weaponry and that the efforts that would make this work a reality.
Does Iran posses any actual nuclear weapons or weapons grade nuclear material?
Iran has been insisting that its nuclear program is peaceful long.
But allegations against its construction of nukes are the red signal that Israel produced prior to its invasion. Tel Aviv even went on to say that Tehran was in a one-way street as regards to the nuclear weapon production process.
Iran threatened to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which became the of the international system to prevent acquisition of nuclear weapons. Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran, Takht Ravanchi dismissed rumours that the programme will be dropped. Somebody could not boss us around and tell us what to do…”
The American narrative on this aspect has been a bit confusing however.
Last week, a CNN report also claimed that US intelligence after the first missile attack of Israel did not indicate that Iran was trying to develop and make nuclear warfare; that Iran is still a few (three) years too early to wield one.
The strikes by Israel had also only put Iran back a few months, according to Intel, since most of the research was entrenched deep underground, in bases such as Fordow, which Israeli missiles are incapable of destroying.
But a senior official told CNN Tehran does possess all the ingredients.
Then, confusion was created when Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence in the US rescinded what she had told the Americans in the Congress a few months ago, that there is no threat of Iran constructing nuclear weapons.
However, Saturday she said they could be created by Iran in weeks.
This was confirmed after president Donald Trump had indicated that her previous information was wrong.
Although Trump earlier warned Iran to strike a nuclear safeguard agreement within two weeks, he took steps because the intelligence showed that Israel would be capable of disabling Iranian installations but not efficaciously without US support.
We are not engaged in it (but) there is a possibility that we will…” Hours before the US launching an attack, Trump said on Sunday morning in an interview with ABC, and demanded Iran and Israel to come to an agreement with each other, saying that they ought to do so, before it was too late.
According to the strikes, Trump described that the nuclear programme in Iran is totally and completely destroyed by the bunker busters and a salvo of Tomahawk missiles launched as decoys. He was celebrating the 37-hour military operation which was spearheaded by seven B-2 stealth bombers that buzzed radio-silently and non-stop in an air base in Missouri.
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