₦airaland Forum

President Donald Trump’s decision to order US forces to attack three key Iranian nuclear installations may have sabotaged the Islamic Republic’s known atomic capabilities, but it’s also created a monumental new challenge to work out what’s left and where.

Trump said heavily fortified sites were “totally obliterated” late Saturday, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. Rather than yielding a quick win, the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring Iran doesn’t build a weapon, according to three people who follow the country’s nuclear program.
International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13. They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran’s declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground.

Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran’s underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow.
Satellite images taken on Sunday of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged.

There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference on Sunday that an assessment of “final battle damage will take some time.”





IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven’t been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location.
Indeed, there’s just a slim possibility that the US entering the war will convince Iran to increase IAEA cooperation, said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

“The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don’t work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future,” she said.

The IAEA called on a cessation of hostilities in order to address the situation. Its 35-nation board will convene on Monday in Vienna, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.
Before the US intervention, images showed Israeli forces alone had met with limited success four days after the bombing began. Damage to the central facility in Natanz, located 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Tehran, was primarily limited to electricity switch yards and transformers.

The US also joined in attacking the Isfahan Nuclear Technology and Research Center, located 450 kilometers south of Tehran. That was after the IAEA re-assessed the level of damage Israel had dealt to facility. Based on satellite images and communications with Iranian counterparts Isfahan appeared “extensively damaged,” the agency wrote late on Saturday.
The IAEA’s central mission is to account for gram-levels of uranium around the world and to ensure it isn’t used for nuclear weapons. The latest bombing now complicates tracking Iranian uranium even further, said Tariq Rauf, the former head of the IAEA’s nuclear-verification policy.



“It will now be very difficult for the IAEA to establish a material balance for the nearly 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, especially the nearly 410 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium,” he said.

Last week, inspectors had already acknowledged they’d lost track of the location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile because Israel’s ongoing military assaults are preventing its inspectors from doing their work.

That uranium inventory — enough to make 10 nuclear warheads at a clandestine location — was seen at Isfahan by IAEA inspectors. But the material, which could fit in as few as 16 small containers, may have already been spirited off site.

“Questions remain as to where Iran may be storing its already enriched stocks,” Dozikova said. “These will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or US strikes.”
Far from being just static points on a map, Iran’s ambitions to make the fuel needed for nuclear power plants and weapons are embedded in a heavily fortified infrastructure nationwide. Thousands of scientists and engineers work at dozens of sites.

Even as military analysts await new satellite images before determining the success of Trump’s mission, nuclear safeguards analysts have reached the conclusion that their work is about to become significantly harder.


By bombing Iran’s sites, Israel and the US haven’t just disrupted the IAEA’s accountancy of Iran’s nuclear stockpile, they’ve also degraded the tools that monitors will be able to use, said Robert Kelley, who led inspections of Iraq and Libya as an IAEA director.

That includes the forensic method used to detect the potential diversion of uranium. “Now that sites have been bombed and all classes of materials have been scattered everywhere the IAEA will never again be able to use environmental sampling,” he said. “Particles of every isotopic description have infinite half-lives for forensic purposes and it will be impossible to sort out their origin.”


https://www.google.com/amp/s/businessday.ng/news/article/satellite-images-undermine-trumps-claim-irans-atomic-sites-destroyed/%3famp

Did anyone read Trump's X statement

For real

Trump is now seemingly a worse dictator
And a fast rising Adolf Hitler.

If Iran had nuclear weapons, they would never have dared attack Iran.

You see life?

The weapons of the world's enemy have been completely destroyed. No amount of denial or AI images can change that

ClearFlair:
The weapons of the world's enemy have been completely destroyed. No amount of denial or AI images can change that

Iran CAN NEVER be allowed to have nuclear power. NEVER EVER, until world ends, NEVER! Just take that to the Bank, if they prove difficult, even Lybia and Afghanistan will be paradise compared to Iran. In any case, since they claimed to have moved them, then Ayatollah must be removed to have a moderate leadership in Iran

Sirmwill:
Did anyone read Trump's X statement

For real

Trump is now seemingly a worse dictator
And a fast rising Adolf Hitler.

If Iran had nuclear weapons, they would never have dared attack Iran.

You see life?

Nonsense talk.
Wats wit this nairaland quality post wit 40 words robot that keeps popping up

Amitex:
Iran CAN NEVER be allowed to have nuclear power. NEVER EVER, until world ends, NEVER! Just take that to the Bank, if they prove difficult, even Lybia and Afghanistan will be paradise compared to Iran. In any case, since they claimed to have moved them, then Ayatollah must be removed to have a moderate leadership in Iran

See this one sounding more American than Americans.

More Israeli than Israelis.

More oyinbo than oyinbos.

What has Iran ever done to you?

Boko Haram and co, you don't know it is Qatar, UAE, Saudi, and USA that are funding them?

Enemies of Iran?

How will you know when CNN has blocked your head with western propaganda?

It costs over $2 billion to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq should use that money to improve the wellbeing of their people. They shouldn't be competing with countries that don't know what to do with money anymore.

ClearFlair:
The weapons of the world's enemy have been completely destroyed. No amount of denial or AI images can change that

The joke is on you bro. The Iranians will secretly build a nuclear bomb if they decide to and there will be no one to monitor them.

Amitex:
Iran CAN NEVER be allowed to have nuclear power.

You're saying this because the Anglo-Saxons are saying it too abi?😂

SmartPolician:
It costs over $2 billion to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq should use that money to improve the wellbeing of their people. They shouldn't be competing with countries that don't know what to do with money anymore.

Bullcrap.

Let Every Nation in the middle east get rid of their nukes. Starting with Israel.

It can Never be one rule for Oyinbo Israel, and another rule for everyone else there.

Until then, it will be War.

SmartPolician:
It costs over $2 billion to build a nuclear weapon. Iraq should use that money to improve the wellbeing of their people. They shouldn't be competing with countries that don't know what to do with money anymore.

The way some of you guys reason is so irritating. So Iran can not build nuclear for civilians use because the Anglo-Saxons and Jews are not comfortable with it?

Iran didn't break the contract they had with the USA, it was the USA that tore apart the contract for reasons best known to Trump. If Trump sticked to the contract, we won't be where we are today.

Ikaeniyan0:
You're saying this because the Anglo-Saxons are saying it too abi?😂

Do they have independent thinking faculties outside CNN and Fox News programming?

Nigerians are just puppets and robots led by the nose by western propaganda and foreign religion.

They don't know anything.

Kushites:
Bullcrap.

Let Every Nation in the middle east get rid of their nukes. Starting with Israel.

It can Never be one rule for Oyinbo Israel, and another rule for everyone else there.

Until then, it will be War.

Keyboard warriors everywhere.
War with who?
Have you ever experienced war?
War with person wey pass you?
Dey play!!

We all need to apologize to Hitler!

Very few has questioned his motive

Kushites:
Do they have independent thinking faculties outside CNN and Fox News programming?

Nigerians are just puppets and robots led by the nose by western propaganda and foreign religion.

They don't know anything.

It's a shame the black man is supporting injustice.

They had a deal with the USA under Obama, and Iran sticked to the deal. It was the USA that broke the deal under Trump for no tangible reason.

Some people throwing weight behind Iran will make them suffer,i pity iran

copied: There has been no US declaration of war.
Sadly Israel is too powerful in USA. so Trump tried to satisfy them by just bombing the nuclear development sites so is to say that that’s all he is interested in.
The Iranians should keep their mouth shut and pretend those sites were destroyed.

Ikaeniyan0:
The joke is on you bro. The Iranians will secretly build a nuclear bomb if they decide to and there will be no one to monitor them.

They don't even need to build, there are at least 3 countries willing to transfer some to them.