{"id":1546675,"date":"2025-07-12T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1546675"},"modified":"2025-07-12T16:15:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T20:15:00","slug":"iran-could-recover-some-enriched-uranium-buried-deep-at-isfahan-israel-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/iran-could-recover-some-enriched-uranium-buried-deep-at-isfahan-israel-says\/1546675\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Could Recover Some Enriched Uranium Buried Deep At\u00a0Isfahan, Israel Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">Iran Could Recover Some Enriched Uranium Buried Deep At\u00a0Isfahan, Israel Says<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p>A senior Israeli official cited in the BBC and NY Times has said that intelligence indicates <strong>much of Iran&#8217;s enriched uranium is buried at Isfahan<\/strong>, which was struck by US missiles during &#8220;Operation Midnight Hammer&#8221; on June 22.<\/p>\n<p>The official appears to have been part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu&#8217;s delegation to Washington this week, which involved several visits to the White House and meetings with President Trump. The words somewhat <strong>contradict the Trump admin position that everything was utterly destroyed<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; and this is coming from a close ally.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/isfahan_0.jpg?itok=X3XNi8yF\"><em>Maxar\/Getty Images<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The official described, as paraphrased by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn0qzxvydz1o\">BBC report<\/a>, that <strong>&#8220;Iran may still be able to access enriched uranium stored beneath one of the three sites targeted by U.S. airstrikes last month.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In a briefing with American reporters, the official noted that while retrieving the uranium at the Isfahan facility would be very challenging, <strong>any attempt by Iran to do so would likely trigger further Israeli military action<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Israel&#8217;s assessment currently indicates that the June US-Israeli attacks set back the Islamic Republic&#8217;s program by two years. Other foreign officials, including in Europe, believe it could just be a matter of months.<\/p>\n<p>The White House has remained adamant that the enriched uranium stockpiles were completely &#8220;obliterated&#8221; &#8211; a word repeatedly used by Trump himself.<\/p>\n<p>Iran&#8217;s president has conceded that while sites were &#8220;severely damaged&#8221; it remains that the Iranians cannot access stockpiles buried under the rubble. But hawks and critics will point to this potentially being <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cn0qzxvydz1o\">a ruse<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi told CBS, the BBC&#8217;s US partner, that while the three targeted Iranian sites were &#8220;destroyed to an important degree&#8221;, parts are &#8220;still standing&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared, and there is nothing there,&#8221; Mr Grossi said.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In an interview with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson published earlier this week, Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian said that the facilities were &#8220;severely damaged&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>&#8220;Therefore we don&#8217;t have any access to them,&#8221;<\/strong> he said, adding that a full assessment is impossible for now.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile the NY Times has further cited the same Israeli official to claim that Iran ramped up nuclear activity after September of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/10\/us\/politics\/iran-attacks-damage.html\">last year<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>The senior official also said that Israel had begun moving toward military action against Iran late last year after seeing what the official described as <strong>a race to build a bomb as part of a secret Iranian project<\/strong>. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The official said Israeli intelligence picked up the nuclear weapons activity soon after the Israeli Air Force killed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/09\/28\/world\/middleeast\/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-dead.html\" title=\"\">Hassan Nasrallah<\/a>, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon. That observation prompted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to prepare for an attack with or without U.S. help.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A slew of other outlets have also picked up on the statements by the unnamed senior Israeli official&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Parts of Iran\u2019s stockpile\u2019 of enriched uranium \u2018SURVIVED airstrikes\u2019 last month \u2014 NY Post<\/p>\n<p>Iran\u2019s nuclear engineers could access it, claims \u2018senior Israeli official\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Includes the 60% enriched uranium at Isfahan and other sites <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/7QFdqtNPgt\">pic.twitter.com\/7QFdqtNPgt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 RT (@RT_com) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RT_com\/status\/1943401282720477499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 10, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of course, it is impossible to vet these claims, and the statements are being issued by a country which is in an official state of war with Israel, so they should be assessed with the necessary critical context and lens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" class=\"username\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Sat, 07\/12\/2025 &#8211; 12:15<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/iran-could-recover-some-enriched-uranium-buried-deep-isfahan-israel-says\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/iran-could-recover-some-enriched-uranium-buried-deep-isfahan-israel-says<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran Could Recover Some Enriched Uranium Buried Deep At\u00a0Isfahan, Israel Says A senior Israeli official cited in the BBC and NY Times has said that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1546676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1546675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1546675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1546676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1546675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1546675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1546675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}