The head of France’s foreign intelligence agency stated Tuesday that last month’s Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran had destroyed only part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, though the reality is that the exact whereabouts of the remaining material are unknown.
Chief of the country’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) Nicolas Lerner said in a televised interview the strikes had merely delayed Iran’s nuclear program by several months.
“Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged,” he said. “The nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months,” he added.
While France has some indications of where Iran’s uranium might be, Lerner emphasized in the remarks that definitive confirmation would only be possible once the UN’s atomic watchdog resumes inspections in the country; however, the problem is that Tehran just formally booted IAEA inspectors from the country.
“Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It’s very important. We won’t have the capacity to trace it (the stocks),” Lerner said.
Iranian officials have accused IAEA officials of actually spying on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, secretly passing information on to Tel Aviv and Washington, which helped with targeting in the recent 12-day war.
Lerner’s assessment somewhat partially aligns with the view of US intelligence and the military, given that last week Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the strikes likely pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by one to two years.
But the Trump admin has consistently claimed that Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan had been destroyed, amid conflicting reports and some international pushback on his assertions.
Other Western officials have indicated a setback of merely “months”. And even some US intelligence officials have been quoted in CNN and the NY Times giving a similar assessment.
Hellbound and Down 