Israel-Iran latest: Week of shifting descriptions of US attack on Iran spark ongoing questions about extent of damage, goals

Washington – A week after President Donald Trump requested an American attack on three Iranian nuclear sites, the interpretations and descriptions of what happened before him, and senior assistants and early intelligence reports draw contrasting pictures of the damage to the Iranian nuclear program.

While President and Defense Minister Beit Higseth has repeatedly claimed that the Iranian nuclear program had been “blocked”, it was drawn up in the initial assessments – including the Pentagon’s intelligence wing – a sophisticated picture with the passage of the week.

Trump said that the attack on June 21 had ordered the necessity of a 300 -feet uranium enrichment site in Jabal Fordo in northwestern Iran, a site to enrich uranium in Natanz and the Center for Svehnic nuclear technology after reports that Iranian officials failed to comply with international nuclear regulations.

Since these early damage assessments are doubt about the disruption of the Iranian nuclear program, many major Trump aides and Allied legislators also appear to increase the stated targets of the attack.

Here are some accounts and descriptions during the past week.

Naming the officials of the success mission, but they provided few details to start

On Sunday morning, Defense Minister Beit Higseth repeated Trump’s statement from Saturday night, immediately after the strikes, that the sites were “bid”.

“It was clear that we destroyed the Iranian nuclear program,” he added.

However, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, General Dan Kane, refused to go further, saying it would take more time to assess the damage to the damage.

Higseth acknowledged that the assessment of the damage was continuing, but holding the description it was using and Trump.

He said, “All our microfinance that struck us as we wanted to strike them and have the required effect, which means especially the primary goal here, we believe that we have achieved the destruction of the capabilities there.”

Pentagon’s initial damage leak

Officials and inspectors from outside Iran were unable to directly access to the sites that were bombed to conduct a direct evaluation.

Trump officials had a more accurate experience after news reports appeared on Tuesday about an initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who said the attack was repeating the Iranian nuclear program only by months.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio condemned the leaks of the army report, but he did not go to the point of claiming that the sites were blurred.

Instead, he insisted that “very great damage, large” for the main components of the Iranian nuclear program “, and we just learn more about it.

Meanwhile, Rubio gave more details about the attack, including the susceptible bombs that were dropped on the ventilation shafts leading to the high-fender-burial Fordo facility, officials and experts from 200 to 300 feet said inside a mountain.

It was ultimately acknowledged that it was difficult to get a reading of the damage to Fordo at this stage, but he stressed “the bottom line is real damage.”

On the same day, the Director of National Intelligence, Toulcy Gabbard, claimed in a statement that the three facilities were destroyed.

On Wednesday, the Director General of the United Nations Nuclear Supervision Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Ghosti, said on Wednesday that he believed that some enriched uranium in Iran had been transferred from the sites before the attacks.

Trump refuted this analysis.

“It would take two weeks, perhaps. But it is very difficult to remove this type of material, very difficult and very dangerous. In addition, they knew that we were coming, and if they knew that we were coming, they will not be there,” he said on Wednesday.

Trump repeated that the sites and uranium are buried under the rubble and are not accessible, adding that the trucks seen in the satellite images in the factory before the attack – which could have been used to move nuclear materials – were construction vehicles that were used to cover the ventilation column openings with protective concrete.

According to the two persons familiar with the DIA report, the shelling closed the entrances to two of the three nuclear sites targeted in the attack, but most damage to the structures were made over the ground, leaving the bottom structures.

The evaluation also found that at least some fertilized uranium shadow – may have been transferred from nuclear sites before explosions.

The next day, on Thursday, Higseth held a press conference as he criticized the news media due to reports, but did not take the same evaluation on nuclear materials.

He was asked twice while briefing whether it could be more specific about whether enriched uranium was transferred before the attack, Higseth said the Pentagon “watches every side.”

In the same briefing on Thursday, Kane indicated that it is not his job to assess the damage, saying: “We do not lead to the classification of our homework.”

The ceasefire confirmed the destruction of the facility by officials

Higseth also highlighted what appeared to be a different goal of the mission, on the pretext that the attack had succeeded because it led to the cessation of the fighting between Iran and Israel – instead of destroying the facilities because it destroyed the Iranian nuclear program.

“We got this peace, which stops shooting, this option because of strength, because of [Trump’s] He said that the willingness to use US military force no one else on this planet can do with the type of planners and operators that the president has just set up. “

Then, on Friday, Trump repeated this feeling.

“They offered that fire as soon as that happened, as soon as these bombs leaked, that war ended,” he said.

However, the president once again claimed that the sites were obliterated during a press conference.

He said: “We have finished them, I don’t think they will return to a nuclear any time soon.”

Abbas Aragchi, Iranian Foreign Minister on Iranian state TV, said on Thursday, however, the facilities were not destroyed and that his country will have influence in the negotiations.

The fate of enriched uranium

In the Capitol Hill on Thursday, after the administrator officials gave a conference a shorts on strikes, Republican lawmakers admitted that the American strikes may not destroy the Iranian trick of the fed up of uranium. But they said this was not part of the mission.

“The purpose of the task is to eliminate certain aspects of its nuclear program. Elimination of nuclear materials was not part of the task,” said MP Greg Murphy, RN.C.

“The program was blocked in those three sites,” said Senator Lindsi Graham, RS.C.