Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla
Topics: Iran, Israel, US News, Donald Trump
Britt Jones
Topics: Iran, Israel, US News, Donald Trump
After the US confirmed to have launched three bombs at Iran over the weekend, experts have shared whether the strikes actually reached their nuclear objectives and how much damage they really did.
Israel and Iran have been suffering mounting tension after Israel launched attacks on Iranian nuclear and military sites on June 13 due to allegations that the nation was building nuclear weapons.
Iran retaliated, and ultimately the US announced that it would join the attack, sending its own airstrikes on three nuclear sites in Iran to decimate the locations on Saturday night (June 21).
President Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to warn Iran to not retaliate against the US, and to come to an agreement with Israel instead.
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However, Iran attempted to strike a US air base in Qatar last night (June 23), with Qatari air defences intercepting the missiles so that there were no casualties.
Trump went on to call Iran's move 'a very weak response' and thanked Tehran 'for giving us early notice'.
Trump went on to later claim that a ceasefire agreement had been reached by Iran and Israel, but it seemingly lasted all of a few hours after Iran allegedly fired missiles at Israel this morning.
Satellite images have been released of the three Iranian underground facilities hit by US stealth bombers, as experts warn the result could actually speed up Iran’s nuclear development process.
Trump had described the strikes against the Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan sites as a ‘spectacular military success’, adding that they had been ‘completely and totally obliterated’.
But satellite pictures released by space tech company Maxar paint a bit of a different image to what Trump shared.
In fact, they don't appear to show much damage to the surface of the ground, let alone to the underground base.
Dr Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute and a former member of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), told The Independent that the bomb the US dropped had limited effectiveness.
In fact, it's been claimed the strikes didn't allow the US to come any closer to what it wanted - Iran's nuclear stockpile.
This is because Fordow is built underground, and Iran had time to remove equipment and evacuate before the strikes hit.
He said: “I understand that Fordow has a symbolic importance to people, but it is by no means the only underground facility associated with Iran's nuclear program. And given how long it took the U.S. to strike, it's not clear to me that by the time it was hit, it was even the most important, because the Iranians had had time to power off centrifuges and possibly remove them.”
One of the reasons Iran’s nuclear facilities were targeted is down to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium increasing.
The country has stockpiled uranium over the years and now has an estimated 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which needs to be enriched 30 percent more than its current 60 percent to develop 10 nuclear weapons.
Following the strikes on the bases, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said his agency was seeking access to ‘account for’ those stockpiles.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance admitted that the whereabouts of the uranium is unknown.
"We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that's one of the things that we're going to have conversations with the Iranians about," he said.