WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – While the US’ strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities may have left Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium intact, it is likely to be impossible to reach for many years, if ever, US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh claimed on Wednesday.
“The total isolation at Fordo of Iran’s only known supply of enriched uranium means that the ability to fabricate a nuclear warhead, if Iran’s leadership chose to do so, has been grievously impaired. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium may be intact, but it will be impossible to reach for many years, if ever,” Hersh said in an article.
He added that sources told him that no US missile targeted any of Iranian officials, as the country’s nuclear capabilities were the main objective.
Earlier in the day, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission said that the US strike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment facility destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure, rendering it inoperable and significantly hindering Iran’s nuclear weapons development for years.
On Tuesday, CNN reported, citing a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, that US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities did not destroy the main components of Iran’s nuclear program but, according to a preliminary US intelligence assessment, only “set back” its development for several months.
Following the reports, US President Donald Trump accused The New York Times and CNN of trying to spread misleading information regarding the results of US strikes on Iranian facilities.