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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