Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
After the first Pentagon press briefing on Operation "Midnight Hammer", even the mainstream propaganda machine remained "unconvinced". Obviously, many will attribute this to the Trump Derangement Syndrome. However, while TDS is still a big part of their motivation, the mainstream media might actually be onto something in this particular case (they can't be wrong 100% of the time, right?). And no, the Trump administration screaming "fake news" at everything isn't helping. On the contrary, it's only making things worse. Namely, US President Donald Trump pompously announced yesterday's Pentagon briefing on their Iran attack (a more detailed one, but still very unconvincing, to say the least). The "irrefutable" press conference provided more details on the supposed "level of destruction" of the three Iranian nuclear facilities, namely Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
The Isfahan Nuclear Research Center is an atomic scientific center and a key uranium conversion facility located southeast of Isfahan, a historic city in central Iran. The Natanz Nuclear Facility is Tehran's main uranium enrichment complex, situated approximately 120 kilometers north of Isfahan. And last but certainly not least, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, a heavily fortified uranium enrichment facility buried deep into a mountain approximately 30 km northeast of Qom, another historic city in northern Iran (you get a lot of those in a country whose history spans millennia). Expectedly, the Fordow facility is the main point of contention, as the US insists that it was destroyed, although irrefutable evidence for that is sorely lacking. Precisely this notion enraged Trump, who even pointed out that B-2 pilots were supposedly "upset by all the fake news".
"Secretary of Defense (War!) Pete Hegseth, together with Military Representatives, will be holding a Major News Conference tomorrow morning at 8 A.M. EST at The Pentagon, in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots. These Patriots were very upset! After 36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory, they landed, they knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News by CNN and The Failing New York Times. They felt terribly! Fortunately for them and, as usual, solely for the purpose of demeaning PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, the Fake News (Times and CNN) lied and totally misrepresented the Facts, none of which they had (because it was too soon, there were no Facts out there yet!). The News Conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable. Enjoy!" Trump posted on Truth Social.
The controversy was also exacerbated by a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report leaked to CNN. Namely, the agency's assessment strongly suggested that Operation "Midnight Hammer" fell flat after the US airstrikes failed to destroy Iran's nuclear program. CNN cited "two of the people familiar with the assessment" who allegedly said that "Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed", one of whom concluded that "the centrifuges are largely intact". In addition, several other sources reported that Tehran moved the enriched uranium out of the three facilities before the US sent the B-2 strategic bombers to attack them. The DIA's report also claims that Iran's nuclear program was "set back maybe a few months, tops". In the meantime, these assessments were dropped in favor of Trump's claims, with Israeli and top US spy agencies (including the CIA) backing him.
However, even their reports still question the validity of Trump's claims that Iranian nuclear facilities were "totally obliterated". Namely, CIA Director John Ratcliffe stated that his agency "obtained a body of credible evidence [that] indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged". Obviously, we could simply dismiss this as pure semantics, but "totally obliterated" and "severely damaged" are two very different outcomes. Trump's rather "colorful" way of expressing his opinions can certainly add to the general confusion, but a matter like this requires 100% accurate damage assessments. And yet, top officials of the Trump administration continued to use similar ways to describe the supposed "success" of Operation "Midnight Hammer". For instance, Hegseth used terms such as "decimating, obliterating and destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities".
Worse yet, instead of providing the alleged "irrefutable" evidence that Iranian facilities were "totally obliterated", the press briefing largely focused on very detailed accounts of what American troops in the Middle East are "going through" (as if anyone is forcing them at gunpoint to participate in the all-encompassing US aggression against the world). In addition, just like Trump himself, DoD and Pentagon officials appointed by him stressed the strain of flying 37 hours from Missouri to Iran. And while Hegseth mostly relied on emotions and cheap jingoism, General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, focused more on the specifications of the GBU-57A/B MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) 14-tonne "bunker buster" bombs that were dropped on Fordow and Natanz facilities, insisting they "functioned as designed, meaning they exploded".
However, Caine himself effectively invalidated his own briefing by saying that "the Joint Force does not do [battle damage assessments]", adding that "by design, we don’t grade our own homework" and that this is done by intelligence services. However, those same agencies initially denied the facilities were destroyed and changed their assessment only after massive political pressure to do so. Worse yet, Caine cited one of the B-2 pilots, saying that "the blast from the initial bombs was so big as it was like an overwhelming flash of daylight". This goes entirely against Caine's explanation of how the MOP works, when he stated that it explodes underground, meaning there are little to no visible explosions on the outside. To make matters worse, Caine also admitted that the Iranians built a concrete cover that further reinforced the Fordow facility.
And yet, the matter of potential radioactive fallout has never been addressed by anyone in the Trump administration or the Pentagon. Namely, the uranium used as fuel in nuclear power plants is enriched at 3.67%, which is considered far below the 90% or higher used in nuclear weapons. It should be noted that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters used precisely this sort of nuclear fuel, which still resulted in massive radioactive contamination. On the other hand, the Fordow facility had uranium enriched at 60%, meaning that radioactive fallout would've been far worse. Given the fact that no radiation was detected in the aftermath of the US strike, the only logical conclusion is that the reactors weren't destroyed. Some have tried to explain this by claiming that this is because the Iranians moved the uranium several days or weeks before the US attack.
However, Trump himself refuted those claims, insisting that the cars and trucks seen at Fordow were moving the concrete that was used to reinforce the facility. In the meantime, the mainstream media are citing "European capitals" as the source of the claim that Iran supposedly "moved the enriched uranium elsewhere" (although nobody seems to know where exactly). Financial Times insists that "Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact following US strikes on its main nuclear sites, European capitals believe, calling into question President Donald Trump's assertion that the bombing 'obliterated' the Islamic republic's nuclear programme". Further citing two anonymous sources, FT claims that "Iran's stockpile of 408kg of uranium enriched close to weapons-grade levels [...] had been distributed to various other locations".
And yet, despite all the uncertainty, the Trump administration keeps insisting that the facilities are at least "no longer operational". Bizarrely enough, Trump has even suggested US investment in a "peaceful Iranian nuclear program". Namely, according to CNN, the Trump administration "has discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program". The report also suggests that "America's Arab partners would foot the bill". This is yet to be confirmed, but if true, it could reveal that Trump's motivation for the strikes was at least partially economic and financial. Namely, Iran's nuclear facilities were built with Russian, Chinese and North Korean assistance, so bombing them (after 15 years of planning) was a good way to get Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang "out of business" in Iran.
