Trump Says Iran's Nuke Sites Are 'Obliterated.' The Military Isn't So Sure.

The Intercept

5 days ago

President Donald Trump took to social media to crow over his bombing of Iran on Saturday night. 'Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,' he wrote.
Current and former Pentagon officials question Trump's certainty that three of Iran's nuclear sites were 'totally obliterated' by U.S. attacks. One current official called the post-strike assessment, offered in the immediate wake of the Saturday attacks, 'overblown.' All said the destruction at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan was extensive, but that the full extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear capabilities was not immediately clear.
'Overblown and premature,' the defense official, commenting about Trump's claims on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, told The Intercept by instant message. 'What else is new[?]' That assessment was echoed by a former defense official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of his current employment.
In the wake of such criticism, Trump doubled down. 'Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!' he posted on TruthSocial on Sunday. 'The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!'
'From a targeting standpoint, 'destruction' means there is absolutely nothing left. These facilities were not destroyed by formal definition. Further, there is no way to assess the full scale of damage against such targets without boots on the ground,' said Wes Bryant, a former Pentagon official who previously worked as a Special Operations joint terminal attack controller, or JTAC, and called in thousands of strikes against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups across the greater Middle East.
Bryant added: 'Suffice to say that the use of these facilities has been denied for the near or considerable future, and the strikes no doubt had a psychological effect on the regime. However, to state that any potential nuclear weapons development on the part of Iran has been permanently stopped would be incredibly naive.'
Six U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers reportedly dropped 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bombs colloquially known as 'bunker busters' — on the heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, Iran's main location for enriching uranium. A seventh U.S. B‑2 bomber attacked the Natanz Nuclear Facility with two GBU‑57 bombs, while a U.S. Navy submarine also launched Tomahawk missiles, targeting both Natanz and Esfahan, as part of the mission code-named 'Operation Midnight Hammer.'
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reiterated the IAEA's consistent message that 'armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place, and could result in radioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked,' in an address to the agency's Board of Governors on Monday.
He noted that craters were now visible at the Fordow site but stated that 'no one — including the IAEA — is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow. He added: 'Given the explosive payload utilized, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.'
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow had been moved to an undisclosed location ahead of the U.S. strikes. Before and after the Saturday attacks, current and former U.S. defense officials told The Intercept that this was highly likely.
'We often don't give our adversaries enough credit and underestimate their savviness. They've been planning for something like this for years. They could have planted information on Fordow as a decoy,' Bryant explained. 'It could be a major nuclear facility but might not have been as important as people think. Their nuclear warfare capabilities might be under development somewhere that we don't even know about and they could have invited the attack on this high-profile decoy. There is no reporting saying that's the case, but these are things you always have to look at when you're planning military operations — especially of this scale against a near-peer adversary.'
Grossi also confirmed the damage at Natanz and said that at Esfahan, the 'affected buildings include some related to the uranium conversion process' and that entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material also appear to have been attacked.
U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Sunday that there was 'severe damage and destruction' to the three facilities but did not go so far as to say that Iran's nuclear capacities had been eliminated.
'Final battle damage [assessments] will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,' Caine said. When asked if Iran still retains any nuclear capability, Caine said that battle damage assessments were 'still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.'
The Pentagon did not offer an update on Monday. 'We have nothing additional to provide beyond the Chairman's comments at this time,' a spokesperson told The Intercept.
The White House did not reply to a request for comment about the discrepancy between Caine's statement and Trump's claims.
The aim of the attacks, American and Israeli officials have said, is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. intelligence community says that threat was not, however, real.
'We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,' reads the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment published in March. The assessment serves as the intelligence community's official evaluation of threats to 'the Homeland,' U.S. citizens, and the country's interests. Last week, Trump said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was 'wrong' about intelligence on Iran when she testified in March before the Senate that the nation was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
Photos of the Situation Room during the attack on Iran, released Saturday evening, did not show Gabbard present alongside Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other administration officials. The White House later told Fox News that Gabbard was present.
On Monday, Israel struck Evin prison, Iran's most notorious jail for political prisoners, adding it to the list of nonmilitary and nuclear sites that it has attacked, which includes energy infrastructure and Iran's government news agency. Israeli strikes have killed at least 950 people and wounded 3,450 others since its campaign began 10 days ago, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his desire for regime change in Iran and not ruled out targeting the country's supreme leader, saying 'no one in Iran should have immunity.' Israel's defense minister said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot 'continue to exist.' Trump joined in on the threats, pointing out that the U.S. knows Khamenei's location and dangling the possibility of assassinating him in the future.
The U.S. attacks on Saturday were incredibly complex and expensive. U.S. forces employed approximately 75 precision guided weapons, including 14 of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, according to Caine. More than 125 U.S. aircraft participated in the mission, including the B-2 stealth bombers, fighter jets, and dozens of air refueling tankers. It was reportedly the largest B-2 strike in U.S. history and the second longest B-2 mission ever flown. Bombers launched from the continental U.S. flew east for 18 hours before they attacked Iran, while a decoy flew west over the Pacific. A guided missile submarine; a full array of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft; and hundreds of maintenance and operational military personnel also took part.
Bryant lauded the tactical prowess of the strikes but questioned the aptitude of the man who ordered them. 'It was a demonstration of the unparalleled precision, global reach, and the devastating power of the U.S. military,' he said of the attack, emphasizing that such force needs to be 'tempered and guided by a level hand.' Trump, he said, was unfit for this job, increasingly seems to 'worship' military power, and that the president's sudden decision to join Israel's war 'demonstrates his increasing volatility.'