Hegseth says no intelligence suggests uranium was removed

The big debate this week is how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear sites and whether Iran removed the uranium.

We are going to try to shed as much light as possible on both subjects today.

New Intelligence

When the media ran with a “low confidence” report that the nuclear sites were possibly still functional, the Trump administration went nuts.

That assessment was leaked within 48 hours of the strike, and my contacts tell me that is utterly ridiculous due to the nature of this strike.

This week, reports finally started to surface from our intelligence agencies, and if I am being honest, it is probably still way too early to know the full extent of damage, but at least people have actually started to survey the sites.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe stated that "a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

EU Believes Uranium Was Moved

On Thursday, a report surfaced concerning the removal of uranium from the facilities that were hit.

That was the second mention of this I had seen, as a nuclear watchdog had previously stated that the agency was unable to locate the uranium after the strike.

The Financial Times reported that two people who were allegedly briefed on the strike believed that the stockpile of 900 pounds of 60% enriched uranium was not at Fordow during the attack.

Now, this is not the end of the world, but it behooves everyone to find out if this is true rather than denying it, so we can immediately start to find out where it is being held.

Not True!

One of the things that bothers me about this administration is that it has very thin skin when someone doubts something that it accomplished, such as the effectiveness of these strikes.

After that report surfaced, Trump stated, “The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of facility.”

Hegseth then stated, “I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise.”

They could be right, but the downside of being wrong is fairly significant. So, why not say that we had no intelligence showing it was moved, but we will investigate in the aftermath of the strike and verify whether it was there or not. That is the adult answer and the safe answer. I am hoping that even with the bravado, they are smart enough to verify that uranium is in the rubble and not sitting in a warehouse somewhere.