Israel says Iran could retrieve enriched uranium from nuclear site hit by US

The enriched uranium at Isfahan could potentially be retrieved by Iranians but reaching it would take a very difficult recovery effort, the Israeli official said.

By The Associated Press

Israel believes deeply buried stocks of enriched uranium at one Iranian nuclear facility hit by the U.S. military are potentially retrievable, a senior Israeli official said.

And the agency that built the U.S. “bunker buster” bombs dropped on two other nuclear sites said Thursday that it is still waiting for data to be able to determine if those munitions reached their targets.

Both developments widen the views on the damage from last month’s strikes, when the United States inserted itself in Israel’s war in a bid to eliminate the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful.

President Donald Trump is adamant that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” the three Iranian nuclear facilities it targeted.

International assessments and an initial U.S. intelligence assessment have been more measured, with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency saying in a preliminary report that the strikes did significant damage to the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan sites, but did not destroy them.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has since told skeptical U.S. lawmakers that American military strikes destroyed Iran’s lone metal conversion facility, a setback to the nuclear program that would take years to overcome, and that the intelligence community assessed that the vast majority of Iran’s amassed enriched uranium likely remains buried under the rubble at Isfahan and Fordo.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.

Much of Iran’s enriched uranium is believed deeply buried at the third site, Isfahan, the senior Israeli official said. The U.S. used B-2 stealth bombers to target the Fordo and Natanz sites.

The official spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to share Israeli assessments that had not been made public.

Israel believes Iran’s enriched uranium was distributed in the three sites and had not been moved, the Israeli official said.

Nuclear and nonproliferation experts have warned that Iranians could have moved the stockpiles somewhere safer as Israeli strikes pounded Iran last month and expectation grew that the U.S. military might join in.

The enriched uranium at Isfahan could potentially be retrieved by Iranians but reaching it would take a very difficult recovery effort, the Israeli official said.

Trump and other administration officials have rebuffed suggestions that the June 22 U.S. strikes did anything short of wiping out the nuclear sites. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said they were “destroyed.”

Two officials from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which spent decades designing the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs specifically to destroy Iran’s facilities, said they still did not know yet if the munitions had reached the depths the bombs had been engineered for.

Those officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details on the bombs that had not been previously announced.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in an interview published Monday said the U.S. airstrikes so badly damaged his country’s nuclear facilities that Iranian authorities still have not been able to access them to survey the destruction.

Pezeshkian added in the interview with conservative American broadcaster Tucker Carlson that Iran would be willing to resume cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog but cannot yet commit to allowing its inspectors unfettered access to monitor the sites.

“We stand ready to have such supervision,” Pezeshkian said. “Unfortunately, as a result of the United States’ unlawful attacks against our nuclear centers and installations, many of the pieces of equipment and the facilities there have been severely damaged.”

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said late last month that the three Iranian sites with “capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree.”

But, he added, because capabilities remain, “if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again.” He said assessing the full damage comes down to Iran allowing in inspectors.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared, and there is nothing there,” Grossi said.