Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian offered a rare moment of insight that saw the state of his country’s nuclear program this weekend in an interview with Tucker Carlson, published on Monday.
The United States hit three plants over Iran associated with the development of nuclear weapons on June 22. Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan sites were hit with a number of weapons, including “Bunker-Buster” bombs dropped by B-52 bombing with the capacity to damage or damage underground underground targets. An initial intelligence assessment obtained by Reuters and other news sites reported that strike only put Iranian development back for months, but the White House and the Defense Ministry have isolated that further assessments set the damage to a larger level than was originally reported.
In the construction of the interview’s publication, Carlson told the viewers about his channel that he did not ask Pezeshkian about the status of the nuclear program and the country’s weapons development, considering that he expected the Iranian government to be processed in the case.
Still, the Iranian president offered a what about the program’s fate off -trade during the interview, where he told Carlson: “The facilities that have been severely damaged, and from that we have some access to them and we cannot see – Unles [restored]We have to wait … to see how much they have before damaged. “
The recording that Iranian officials are still unable to access the underground facility targeted at us, provides credibility with the Trump administration’s trane damage was done, which potentially knocked them out of the operation of the predictable future.
An initial US intelligence assessment was leaked to the press and caused headaches to the administration when it claimed that Iran’s stock of uranium was not hit during the attack and that centrifugal in the three places was mostly intact after the strike.
Officials including defense secretary Pete Hegeth Angoly Scoladed Reporters after the publication of the assessment, which they accused of efforts to make the president look bad.
A report from Wall Street JournalIn the days following the initial assessment leakage detailed a separate assessment delivered to members of the Congress of CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
According to Ratcliffe, the strikes were successful in achieving total destruction of the Metals conversion site at Esfahan, which was Iran’s only known facility capable of converting enriched uranium to the Metal-A-Key-End step process in the production of a weapon and a capacity that Iran will require years to rebuild.
The international director of Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Gross told CBS News at the end of June that Iran could produce enriched uranium again within a few months, explaining that the country’s nuclear program did not suffer “total” destruction. But the lack of a metal conversion facility could mean that aty is unable to produce something beyond a relatively unsophisticated weapon unless it has a secret other place outside Esfahan.
The Times of Israel Reported an expert.
“It is clear that there has been serious injury, but it is not total damage, first and foremost,” Gross said. “And secondly, Iran has the capabilities there; industrial and technological capabilities. So if they are so desired, they will be able to start doing this again.”
At the end of June, NBC News reported that experts believed that the destruction of Iran’s air defense systems and continued efforts from Israeli intelligence to uncover hidden aspects of Iran’s nuclear capabilitites would make it a place like Esfahan hidden to a near impossibility.
“Iran’s biggest challenge in pursuing a hidden path will beeping it hidden from us and Israeli detection,” Eric Brewer told Nuclear Threat Initiative to NBC.
“This is the most important challenge because both countries, especially Israel, have disassembled an ability to penetrate Iran’s nuclear program.