Iran no longer has a viable path to produce weapons-grade uranium, a report from some of the world’s top nuclear experts concluded Monday.
Reports from the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) after Operation Midnight Hammer bombed Iran’s main nuclear enrichment sites concluded that Iran has “no identifiable route to produce weapon-grade uranium (WGU) in its centrifuge plant” for the first time in 15 years, the Institute for Science and International Security concluded in their report. Despite Midnight Hammer’s reported success, some remained skeptical as to how far Tehran’s program was set back.
“In addition, the attacks caused immense destruction to Iran’s ability to make the nuclear weapon itself,” the report reads. “For the first time in over 15 years, no breakout estimate to WGU is included in the Institute reporting on the IAEA reports, since to do so would require unsubstantiated speculation about the existence and operability of centrifuges that were not destroyed in the war, such as centrifuges already made but not yet deployed, as well as about the availability of enriched uranium stocks, whether near five percent, near 20 percent, or 60 percent enriched uranium.”
The preponderance of publicly-available assessments from agencies and governments across the world indicated that the strikes did “significant damage” to Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites and that it would likely take years for the nation to recover.
“As the President, national security officials, and outside experts have repeatedly affirmed, Iran’s nuclear capabilities were totally obliterated by Operation Midnight Hammer,” Anna Kelly, White House Deputy Press Secretary, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “The entire world is safer because of President Trump’s decisive action and the U.S. military’s flawless execution.”
The team for the study was led by David Albright, a top nuclear weapons researcher and weapons expert with the Institute.
Albright’s team does note, however, that Iran’s recent shunning of IAEA inspectors has created a lack of recent data from the nuclear sites. The report does not rule out that stockpiles of enriched Uranium from the Fordow, Istfahan or Natanz sites had been moved but did note that there were “no indications that Iran moved stocks outside of these three sites.”
The report also concluded that almost all of Iran’s 22,000 operating gas centrifuges were rendered inoperable or destroyed by the strikes.
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