Some of Iran's enriched uranium survived attacks, Israeli official says
The senior official also said that Israel had begun moving toward military action against Iran late last year after seeing what the official described as a race to build a bomb as part of a secret Iranian project. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information.
The official said Israeli intelligence picked up the nuclear weapons activity soon after the Israeli air force killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon.
That observation prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prepare for an attack with or without US help.
In the days surrounding Israel's attack on Iran in mid-June and President Donald Trump's subsequent decision to join in the action, US intelligence officials said they had seen no evidence of a move by Iran to weaponise its stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
The United States struck two of Iran's most critical enrichment sites with 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs and aimed a barrage of submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles at a third site, where the fuel could be converted for use in weapons.
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The Israeli official said the evidence gathered about the secret program, which the official did not describe in any detail, had been fully shared with the US.
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