Israel believes that Iran could potentially retrieve enriched uranium buried beneath one of the three facilities struck by US forces last month, according to a senior Israeli official.
Speaking to US reporters, the official said that reaching the enriched uranium at Isfahan would be extremely difficult and any attempt would prompt renewed Israeli strikes.
Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that US air and missile strikes on Iran in June “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities, even as some US intelligence agencies have taken a more cautious view.
Iran denies seeking to develop nuclear weapons and says its enrichment of uranium is for peaceful purposes.
In a briefing for reporters in Washington, the senior Israeli official – who declined to be named – said that intelligence indicates that much of Iran’s enriched uranium is buried at Isfahan, which was struck by submarine-launched cruise missiles during “Operation Midnight Hammer” on 22 June.
The official, however, did not express concern about the assessment, noting that any Iranian attempt to recover the material would probably be detected.
According to the official, Israel’s assessment is that Iran’s nuclear programme was set back two years.
Trump and members of his administration have been adamant that the Iranian nuclear facilities were completely destroyed.
“As President Trump has said many times, Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement sent to US media outlets. “The entire world is safer thanks to his decisive leadership.”
The BBC has contacted the White House for further comment.
US intelligence assessments have been more cautious, with a leaked preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency report concluding that while all three sites – at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan – were heavily damaged, they were not completely destroyed.
In late June, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told US lawmakers that the destruction of Iran’s only facility for producing metallic uranium effectively took away Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that while the three targeted Iranian sites were “destroyed to an important degree”, parts are “still standing”.
“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared, and there is nothing there,” Mr Grossi said.
In an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson published earlier this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian said that the facilities were “severely damaged”.
“Therefore we don’t have any access to them,” he said, adding that a full assessment is impossible for now.
