The United Nations‘s nuclear chief warned that Tehran could begin enriching uranium once again in a few months after Iran’s main nuclear facilities were targeted in U.S. strikes.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told CBS News in a Friday interview that the damage done to Iran‘s nuclear facilities was clearly “severe” but not “total.”
“They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” he said.
Grossi urged the international community to get “back to the table” with Iran to find a “long-lasting” and “diplomatic” solution, as it was “clear” Tehran would soon resume its efforts to build its nuclear capabilities.
Though he conceded that significant damage was done against Iranian nuclear capabilities, Grossi also speculated that some enriched uranium may have been moved before the United States’s Operation Midnight Hammer.
“Some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved. So there has to be at some point a clarification. If we don’t get that clarification, this will continue to be hanging, you know, over our heads as a potential problem,” he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agreed with the assessment, telling ABC News’s This Week that 900 pounds of enriched uranium was “still out there.” Despite this, he praised Operation Midnight Hammer as a “tremendous military success.”
“It set the program back, I think, a couple years,” Graham said. “But the question for the world, does the regime still desire to make a nuclear weapon? The answer is yes. Do they still desire to destroy Israel and come after us? The answer is yes. Until that changes, we’ve got to keep our — we’re in trouble.”
President Donald Trump disagreed with both of Grossi’s assertions, sticking by his previous claim that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated” and the U.S. no longer had to worry about it.
In a Friday interview with Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, he said the pursuit of a nuclear bomb is “the last thing they’re going to be doing right now” after Iran’s losses incurred during the “12 Day War” with Israel and Operation Midnight Hammer.
“Well, they might not give up, but they’re going to give up for a while — they’re exhausted. They are exhausted. They took hits like nobody’s ever taken,” he said. “We went in. We destroyed their nuclear capability, and we stopped. It was a beautiful thing. And they couldn’t have gone on much further. … That was a very intense 12 days — very, very intense.”
TRUMP SAYS IRANIANS MOVED THEMSELVES, NOT URANIUM, BEFORE US STRIKES: ‘TRYING TO LIVE’
Trump also disputed accusations that Tehran moved enriched uranium from the Fordow nuclear enrichment plant before the strike.
“They didn’t move anything. You know, they moved themselves. They were all trying to live,” he said. “They didn’t move anything. They didn’t think it was going to be actually doable, what we did. And what we did was amazing.”