US attacks under the “midnight hammer operation” seem to have “significantly” the nuclear program of Iran, CNN This Thursday (26) a former Biden Biden administration coordinator to the Middle East who served under Republican and Democratic presidents.
Brett McGurk said preliminary damage assessments show that key targets, including Fordow’s installation, were successfully hit.
It is one of Iran’s most important nuclear enrichment facilities, buried at the bottom of a mountain to protect it from attacks.
McGurk explained that when the military performs the assessment of damage, they usually follow three phases: in phase I, the physical damage caused to the target sites is evaluated. Phase II evaluates the functional impact on the target. Phase III is expanded to cover all available information and evaluate the overall impact on the target system – in this case the Iran’s nuclear program.
McGurk said it showed that the first two phases of the evaluation considered the operation successful, but the most complex assessment “level three” is still underway and will include contributions from nuclear experts in the US government.
McGurk said that given what he knows about the attacks, he is “quite confident” that the program has suffered a significant setback, even if the full image will take time to emerge.
Asked about the use of the word “obliterate” by Trump, McGurk said the presidents often speak differently from the military or intelligence officers, but added: “We honestly don’t know all the details, but I think the mission was as planned. The news I saw there was that those ammunitions fell into these wells, and that means Fordow is probably quite destroyed. Centrifuges, if they were there, cannot be rotated again. “
Trump administration criticizes reports on one that suggested that the attack did not destroy the main components of Iran’s nuclear program, instead delaying it for a few months.
