Trump’s claims it was ‘obliterated,’ Iran’s nuclear program appears operational

President Trump insists Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” by last year’s U.S. airstrikes.

But Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, said recently that the Islamic republic is about a week away from having enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb.

Which is it?

Mr. Trump’s continued assertion that the U.S. wiped out Iran’s nuclear program, which he repeated during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, seems to be at odds with the facts on the ground and the consensus among national security insiders and Iran watchers around the world. Recent reports and satellite images suggest that at least some key Iranian nuclear sites not only still exist but also are being fortified in an attempt to withstand another round of U.S. bombing.

Perhaps the best evidence that the administration may be exaggerating is its own course of action: U.S. negotiators are scheduled to meet with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva on Thursday with the goal of, among other things, putting new limits on Iran’s nuclear ambitions and specifically its ability to enrich uranium inside the country.

Specialists say it has been clear all along that claims Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed by U.S. strikes in June were not fully accurate.

“No, the idea that it was entirely destroyed back last summer clearly is not the case. That was never the case. From the get-go, there was a question mark about how successful those attacks were,” Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, said in an interview. “Us trying to go back in suggests clearly that even the Trump administration isn’t convinced of that.”

Reuters and other news outlets, citing satellite images, have reported that Iran is repairing and reinforcing the nuclear research facility at Isfahan, long suspected of being a key cog in its nuclear program.

Iran also has reinforced the large tunnel complex at a site known as Pickaxe Mountain, widely thought to be a key nuclear facility, according to recent data from the Institute for Science and International Security.

Isfahan, along with sites at Fordo and Natanz, was targeted in June by Operation Midnight Hammer, which used powerful bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 stealth bombers to try to penetrate the facilities buried deep underground.

The true effectiveness and long-term success of Midnight Hammer has been hotly debated in the months since, and it has been an especially sensitive topic for the Trump administration. An initial damage assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which was leaked to the press, said the attacks set back Iran’s nuclear program for only a few months.

The DIA director at the time the report was produced, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, was fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth two months later.

Around that same time, Rep. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and chairman emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the “Threat Status” weekly podcast that the U.S. strikes set back Iran’s program by “one to two years.” His comments were echoed privately by other Republicans who, while strongly supporting the strikes on Iran, acknowledged that Iran’s nuclear program had not been destroyed.

The status of Iran’s nuclear program is being debated at a pivotal moment. The U.S. has built up significant military assets in the region and appears ready to strike Iran at a moment’s notice.

That military buildup began on the heels of major protests in Iran last month that led to a deadly crackdown of thousands of protesters by the hard-line Islamic regime in Tehran.

The unrest has flared up again. The Iranian dissident group People’s Mojahedin of Iran (MEK), for example, said this week that some of its fighters led a recent attack on the headquarters of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Pasteur Street in Iran.

Those reports could not be independently confirmed, and no photographs or video of the incident were immediately available. MEK said “enemy casualties inside Khamenei’s compound … are reported to be heavy” and that the regime instituted major security measures in the area afterward.

Sticking to its story

Since June, the White House website has included a page titled “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.” Mr. Trump made that case again Tuesday night, even as he simultaneously said he is willing to order more strikes to ensure that Iran doesn’t acquire nuclear weapons.

“After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over. We wiped it out, and they want to start it all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,” the president said. “We are in negotiations with them. … My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei accused Mr. Trump of conducting a “disinformation & misinformation campaign” against Iran.

“Whatever they’re alleging in regards to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s ballistic missiles and the number of casualties during January’s unrest is simply the repetition of ‘big lies,’” Mr. Baghaei wrote on social media.

Earlier Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt specifically said Midnight Hammer did in fact “obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

“That does not mean that Iran may never try again to establish a nuclear program that could directly threaten the United States and our allies abroad,” she said.

The definition of obliterate is to “destroy utterly” or “wipe out,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

There is little doubt that the targeted Iranian facilities, especially at Fordo and Natanz, were heavily damaged, perhaps to the point of being effectively unusable.

The question has always been whether Iran was able to move stockpiles of enriched uranium or key pieces of equipment ahead of the strikes.

Leading up to Midnight Hammer, satellite images showed a large number of trucks at the Fordo nuclear site. Those vehicles may have transported uranium away from the site to other underground locations across the country.

Before the strikes, International Atomic Energy Agency data showed that Iran had nearly 900 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60%, which is a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Iran now seems to be in a similar position.

Mr. Witkoff said last week that Iran is about a week away from having enough enriched uranium to create at least one nuclear bomb.

“That’s really dangerous, so we can’t have that,” Mr. Witkoff told Fox News Channel.

Mr. Witkoff is expected to lead a U.S. delegation meeting with the Iranian side Thursday in Geneva. The talks, said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, have remained entirely focused on the nuclear issue, despite the Trump administration’s effort to also limit Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Iran insists that it has the right under international law to enrich uranium and that its nuclear program is only for peaceful and civilian purposes. Mr. Araghchi has also said that Iran will never abandon its nuclear program under threat of U.S. military strikes.

Iran has maintained that the first two rounds of negotiations with the U.S. delegation have been productive but that a comprehensive deal is still a long way off.