Iran could start producing enriched uranium in a few months, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi said on Sunday.
Trump and his administration have been claiming that the US’s airstrikes last weekend “completely and totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program and potentially set back the country’s nuclear capabilities by decades.
However, a preliminary report produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, say the strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, several people who were brief on the report told CNN.
Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS’s “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday that while the strikes on nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan caused “severe” damage, Tehran’s nuclear program wasn’t obliterated as Trump claims.
“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview.
“It is clear that there has been severe damage, but it’s not total damage,” Grossi added. “Iran has the capacities there; industrial and technological capacities. So if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again.”
Grossi also said that while the IAEA did not see evidence being close to developing a nuclear weapon, Tehran was not answering key questions.
“We didn’t see a program that was aiming in that direction (of nuclear weapons), but at the same time, they were not answering very, very important questions that were pending,” he said.
