In the weeks since the U.S. attacked the Iranian nuclear program with 30,000-pound ¡°bunker busting¡± bombs and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles, we¡¯ve heard wide variation in how much damage has been done overall.
American President Donald Trump¡¯s claim that the U.S. had ¡°obliterated¡± the Iranian nuclear program was widely challenged and current assessments have broadly settled on ¡°severe damage¡± that has set back the program 12 to 24 months.
What is largely not disputed is that 800-plus pounds of enriched uranium remains somewhere in Iran; that some number of the critical enrichment machines (gas centrifuges, cascade structures, precision bearings) are likely still in Iranian hands; and, indisputably, that the scientific knowhow to produce an atomic bomb still exists in the minds of Iranian scientists, engineers and technologists who survived the strikes.
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