As the total damage to three Iranian nuclear sites continues to be assessed, one Middle East expert says that Iran’s stated assessment only reinforces U.S. and Israeli views.
Israel, which has said the strikes set the Iranian nuclear program back years, has the greatest resources in place to make a determination and the most incentive to get the facts right, Jacob Olidort, director of the Center of American Security at the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital.
“Both the US and Israel say they achieved their objectives,” Olidort said. “Israel presumably had planned around this for many years, and Israel says it has met its objectives, which is destroying Iran’s ability to enrich uranium.”
The U.S. launched a surprise strike using B-2 stealth bombers and bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities on Saturday.
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Some media reports have pushed back on the Trump administration’s claims that the sites were destroyed and set Iran back years in its quest to achieve a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Wednesday told Al Jazeera that “our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” though he refused to go into detail.
Olidort said that “everything Iran is doing now is to save face.”
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“We should never take anything Iran says at face value, but their assessment can only reinforce the views of Israel and the U.S. view,” he said.
The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi, reiterated on Thursday that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at Iranian nuclear facilities “is very, very, very considerable.”
“I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage,” Grossi told French broadcaster RFI.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
