‘Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move,’ the U.S. president says.
President Donald Trump on June 26 said Iran didn’t remove uranium from a key nuclear site that was bombed by the United States the prior weekend.
Before-and-after satellite imagery that was released showed there was Iranian activity around the Fordow site before the airstrike. Trump said that the numerous trucks that were seen on-site were not evidence that uranium was being removed.
“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts,” Trump wrote in a statement on social media platform Truth Social on June 26. “Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”
Trump apparently was making reference to satellite imagery of the underground Fordow site near Qom that, along with two other Iranian facilities, was struck by U.S. B-2 bombers on June 21.
Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on June 26 that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at Iranian nuclear facilities was “very considerable” and that he can only assume the facility’s centrifuges are not operational.
“I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage,” Grossi told French outlet RFI. The IAEA has not been allowed to visit any of the Iranian facilities to do an independent assessment of the damage, he stated.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also conceded on June 25 that “our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” which was quoted by the White House in a statement released June 26.
Aside from Trump’s statement, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on June 26 that there is no evidence suggesting that Iranian officials removed the uranium from the sites.
“I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise,” Hegseth told a Pentagon news conference.
