Following nearly two weeks of strikes by American and Israeli forces, there's no doubt that the key parts of Iran's nuclear program have been dealt a blow. But how bad was it? A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency document claims the damage to one site could have been minimal, while the head of the CIA has said that Iran's overall nuclear program had been "severely damaged." President Trump, for his part, insists that the program has been destroyed.
"It's called obliteration," Trump said at a press conference yesterday in the Hague. "No other military on Earth could have done it, and now this incredible exercise of American strength has paved the way for peace."
Here's each of Iran's four main nuclear sites and what's known about their current condition.
Fordo
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Buried deep inside a mountain, the Fordo fuel enrichment site was the most heavily fortified of Iran's nuclear facilities. The site, which sits under nearly 300 feet of granite, contained thousands of centrifuges which were being used to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade.
American planners had worked for over a decade in preparation for a strike at the site, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters today in a media briefing. Two officers from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency were assigned full-time to searching out the site's vulnerabilities, and sophisticated computer models were used to see how to damage it. "They literally dreamed about the target at night when they slept," Caine said.
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With Fordo in mind, the Pentagon developed the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb. B-2 Spirit bombers carried the weapons to Fordo and dropped them down the ventilation shafts. They exploded in a carefully choreographed sequence, with the goal of puncturing the facility.
It was a perfectly executed strike, Caine said. But penetrating a deeply buried facility like Fordo is extremely difficult. Hard rock and irregularities in the geology can prevent the weapons from reaching target depths and can deflect shock waves, says Raymond Jeanloz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied bunker-busters.
Caine stopped short of saying he believed the facility was "obliterated" as President Trump has claimed. "We don't grade our own homework, we let the intelligence community do that," he said.
Outside of the Pentagon, others believe Fordo was significantly damaged by the strike. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that Fordo was "inoperable" following the strike. And speaking on French radio, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said he believed the centrifuges at the site were "no longer operational." The day after the American strike, Israel bombed access routes to Fordo in an effort to delay any return to the facility.
David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, says he expects the damage to be "pretty serious," but he adds, "I think it may be tough to find out what happened at Fordo unless someone goes in."
Natanz
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Before the strikes, Iran's primary enrichment site was at a facility in Natanz. The facility had been subject to sabotage and subterfuge by Israel for many years even before these attacks–including a computer virus that wrecked the centrifuges over a decade ago.
Partially because it was such a target, Iran moved Natanz's centrifuges into an underground hall in recent years.
Israel attacked the Natanz site on the first day of the war. It destroyed an enrichment facility on the surface known as the pilot fuel enrichment plant. Israeli war planes also struck power and other support facilities for the underground portion of the site. Israel also dropped bombs onto the buried centrifuge hall, although they did not appear to pierce the facility.
On June 22, the U.S. followed up with a strike using two Massive Ordnance Penetrators to hit the underground centrifuge halls.
"That facility was not so deeply buried and I would expect that the underground enrichment halls are also very severely damaged," says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who has studied Iran's nuclear facilities for years.
But Lewis also says that near Natanz, Iran has been digging out an enormous underground facility into the side of a mountain. That facility, whose purpose remains unclear, appears to be intact.
Isfahan
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Isfahan was Iran's main site where it prepared uranium for enrichment, and converted it into metal after it was done. Putting the uranium into metallic form is a critical step towards building nuclear weapons.
Israel struck the Isfahan site in the opening hours of its offensive against Iran. It destroyed the facility used to convert the uranium into metals, along with several other buildings inside the complex. The U.S. followed up the Israeli strikes with a salvo of dozens of submarine-launched cruise missiles.
"The above-ground facilities are completely destroyed," Lewis says. "Donald Trump could definitely use the word 'obliterate.'"
But like Natanz, Isfahan had tunnels nearby. Those tunnels, which it's believed may have been used to store some of Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium, were hit, but they are thought to be largely in tact.
Arak
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Most of Iran's nuclear program centered around uranium, but the nation had also built but never started a heavy water reactor that could potentially produce plutonium, another important material for nuclear weapons.
Israel announced it had struck the Arak reactor on June 19, destroying its concrete dome and a nearby laboratory. Although the reactor was not considered an active part of Iran's nuclear program, its destruction means Iran will likely never be able to complete it.
"The Arak reactor was not operational, and it's now really not operational," Lewis says.
The Unknowns
Experts say that, despite these strikes, Iran may still have a significant nuclear capability. Before the attacks, the IAEA assessed that Iran had more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that was near bomb grade. That material had been under safeguards, but now, Grossi says, the Iranians have informed the agency that they have taken protective measures, presumably moving the material to an undisclosed location.
The uranium can be stored in containers that are the size of a keg or a scuba tank, says Corey Hinderstein, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "These are easily moveable, they're easily concealable, and as of now, I don't think we can be confident we know where everything is."
In yesterday's press conference, President Trump indicated that he did not believe the Iranians had time to remove anything from the sites. "I believe they didn't have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast," he said.
But Albright says the uranium is stored in tough containers that might have survived the strike, especially in the tunnels at Isfahan. "If there was any in Isfahan, in the rubble, that clearly can be dug out," he says.
Lewis adds that he believes Iran has other undisclosed underground facilities that could serve as backups for what's been destroyed. "I tend to think there are more sites that we don't know about because Iran was always hedging its bets," he says.
Ultimately, experts say that the only way to stop Iran's nuclear program for good is to reach some sort of agreement.
"If you really want to have reasonable confidence in a solution over time," says Christopher Ford, a former Assistant Undersecretary of State for nonproliferation in Trump's first term, "you need to have an agreement with some kind of cooperative verification and ongoing monitoring."
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