After the 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June 2025, which also saw American B2 bombers attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and Iranian missiles targeting the American military base in Qatar, Israel declared a ‘historic victory’. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that American strikes had “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians kept tactical silence about the impact of the strikes on their nuclear plans, including the Fordow facility, which is built deep underground, beneath a mountain.
However, early assessments by the U.S. intelligence community, which were leaked to American media, claimed that Iran’s nuclear programme had not been destroyed by U.S. strikes, but set back by “a few months”. Even if the nuclear facilities were destroyed, there is no certainty that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and all advanced centrifuges have been destroyed. There were reports, based on European intelligence assessments, that Iran had dispersed its enriched uranium well before the Israeli-American strikes. According to Rafael Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Iran has the industrial and technological capacity to resume enriching uranium in a few months. This leaves the Iranian nuclear programme unresolved, at least from an Israeli point of view
