A top expert has trashed President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear material was far too heavy to be moved ahead of Saturday’s bombing.
Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear nonproliferation expert and former vice chair of the Center for International Policy, told CNN that Iran could have moved its enriched uranium with just “three or four trucks.”
“It could be moved to other existing underground facilities that were not hit,” he explained to CNN host Brianna Keilar. “There are several undeclared sites that we know Iran has built. They just announced one a couple of weeks ago. If they have centrifuges there, they could put that gas back into the centrifuges, spin it up to weapons-grade uranium. They could make the core of a bomb in about five days.”
That contrasts with Trump’s repeated refrain that Iran’s nuclear material was “obliterated” on Saturday, which he has in part explained by saying it would be too heavy to evacuate uranium on such short notice.
“We think we hit them so hard and so fast, they didn’t get to move,” Trump told reporters in a news conference at a NATO summit. “If you knew about that material, it’s very hard and very dangerous to move… They call it ‘dust,’ but it’s very, very heavy. It’s very, very hard to move. And they were way down. You know, they’re 30 stories down. They’re literally 30 to 35 stories down in the ground.”
Cirincione scoffed at this explanation.
“It is volatile, but it’s not that hard to move,” he said of the material.
Cirincione noted that a U.S. intelligence report—leaked from within the Pentagon to multiple news outlets—also concluded that it is likely the Iranians evacuated “at least some enriched uranium” before American B-2 bombers dropped their payloads.
The Defense Intelligence Agency compiled that report with the help of U.S. Central Command. If initial findings are accurate, it blows up the Trump administration’s claim that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back years.
“Set it back years? That’s hard to believe,” Cirincione said of the strike. “And it certainly did not eliminate the 60% enriched uranium.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio begrudgingly admitted Wednesday that the leaked report was genuine. However, they took issue with the finding that Iran’s nuclear program was only set back a few months, and Hegseth claimed the leak was for political purposes.
“We are doing a leak investigation with the FBI now, because this information is for internal purposes—battle damage investigation—and CNN and others are trying to spin it to try and make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success,” Hegseth said.
Cirincione said the report came from an intelligence group that is typically considered “the most conservative of the intelligence agencies out there.”
“So this is not a bunch of pinkos trying to undermine the president,” he said. “They were basing their analysis on data collected by Central Command, the people closest to the strikes, who have been watching this most closely. And this was a serious report. This was not some memo.”
Given the leaked report’s findings, Cirincione said that Saturday’s strike on Iran, which utilized 14 “bunker buster” bombs that cost millions to manufacture‚ was a failure.
“They have failed to achieve their objective,” he told ABC News. “What did the military strike actually accomplish? Nothing. It was a $2 billion fireworks show.”
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