Donald Trump has rejected claims that enriched uranium was removed from one of Iran’s nuclear sites before the U.S strikes and has a novel explanation for the “unusual” activity seen near the plant: concrete workers.
Experts fear that Iran may have moved parts of its nuclear enrichment program to an undisclosed location before the U.S. bombings took place on Saturday.
Satellite imagery released by U.S. defense contractor Maxim Technologies had also shown “unusual truck and vehicular activity” close to the entrance of the underground Fordo complex, south of Tehran, before the attack.
However, in a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump insisted nothing nefarious had taken place.
“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of the facility,” he said.
“Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”
The post was the president’s latest defense of the strikes, which he said “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The attack took place on Saturday when America controversially joined Israel to target Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, the heart of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
But questions about battle damage have mounted over the past few days, after a leaked preliminary intelligence report suggested that the strikes only set Iran’s enrichment program back by six months but did not destroy its core components.
The preliminary analysis was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, and reportedly found that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.
However, the White House has angrily rejected the findings of the early report, and an FBI investigation is now underway into who may have leaked it.
“Iran was weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon that would threaten the entire world,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
“The United States and the entire world are safer because of this President’s decisiveness, despite agenda-driven leaks by the fake news media aimed at undermining this incredible accomplishment.”
Speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room, Leavitt suggested that people in the intelligence community or on Capitol Hill had leaked the classified briefing, which the DIA acknowledged was “low confidence” and incomplete.
She also took aim at the CNN journalist who broke the story, Natasha Bertand, accusing her of being a “reporter who has been used by people who dislike Donald Trump in this government to push fake and false narratives.”
CNN, however, has defended Bertrand and cut into Leavitt’s televised briefing to once again declare that it stood by its reporting.
But tensions over the strikes continue to simmer, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mounting an angry tirade against the media on Thursday for questioning the attack, and Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine providing the most detailed description yet of its planning and execution.
Asked whether uranium had been moved by Iran, Leavitt told reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies had been monitoring the sites for days and had “no indication” that anything was taken out before Saturday’s attack.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi, also reiterated Thursday that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at the Iranian nuclear facilities “is very, very, very considerable” and that he can only assume the centrifuges are not operational.
Others, however, remain concerned.
“The strikes did damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, like the underground Fordo enrichment site. But Tehran had ample time prior to the strikes to remove its stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium to a covert location, and it’s likely that they did so,” Kelsey Davenport from the Arms Control Association told reporters in a briefing this week.
Iran also declared earlier this week that its nuclear program will “resume without interruption”.
“The nuclear program of Iran will resume without interruption, and we are ready to restart enrichment; our program will not stop,” stated the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, according to reports from state media.
The post Trump Has a Concrete New Reason Why His Iran Strikes Were a Hit appeared first on The Daily Beast.
