As President Trump and critics in the press spar over the extent of the damage the American military inflicted on known Iranian nuclear facilities, aspects of the Iranian program that have been hidden could be used to revive Tehran’s race to a bomb, perhaps requiring further strikes. 

Mr. Trump seems ready to close the book on Iran’s nuclear program following America’s Saturday night hits on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Yet, residuals of the nuclear program might yet be reconstituted.  

“Certainly, Iran’s big capabilities have been removed, but they can still dash towards a nuclear weapon,” a Stimson Center weapons watcher, Olli Heinonen, tells the Sun. A former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr. Heinonen adds that facts need to be established by inspectors from the Vienna-based agency.

That the Iranian nuclear program suffered a major setback is difficult to deny. “It is clear that there is one Iran before June 13, a nuclear Iran, and one now, it’s night and day,” the current IAEA director, Rafael Grossi, told Fox News. Yet, a leaked preliminary Pentagon assessment that made the rounds at Washington Tuesday seemed to minimize the war achievements. 

“Strike sets back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, U.S. report says,” a New York Times headline reads. During a press conference at the Hague, Mr. Trump pushed back against the press reports, insisting that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” and that it ended the war. 

“All of the evidence of what was just bombed by 12 30,000-pound bombs is buried under a mountain,” Secretary Hegseth said. “So if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow, you better get a big shovel and go really deep, because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated.”

The Israelis “have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration,” Mr. Trump said. The White House highlighted a report by Israel’s Atomic Agency Commission assessing that the American and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”

The Islamic Republic also said as much. “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Tehran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. Yet, Iranian officials insist that enriched uranium was removed from Fordow, Natanz, and other known installations prior to the Israeli and American strikes. 

Iran had nearly 900 pounds of uranium enriched to a near-bomb level of 60 percent, the IAEA reported early June. American officials say there is no indication that residuals of that enriched uranium survived the recent strikes. Yet, “it is necessary to continue hunting down these items or make a deal where Iran has to give them up,” the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, adds in a post on X.

The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, says the highly enriched uranium was taken out of the facilities before they were struck. “This is enriched uranium in small cylinders,” Mr. Heinonen tells the Sun, adding that they can be stashed away at inconspicuous, fire-proof facilities. “If I had to hide it, I would put it in a very innocent place in the cellar somewhere,” he says. 

Israeli officials say they destroyed laboratories at Natanz where raw uranium was prepared for enrichment, and where experiments in post-enrichment weaponization were conducted. Yet, those labs might have also been relocated before the attacks. “That kind of installation doesn’t need much space,” Mr. Heinonen says. “It can be anywhere in the territory of Iran, and it will be very difficult to find.”

Mr. Grossi says his inspectors could locate the whereabouts of the highly enriched uranium and determine if it was demolished in the strikes or secretly stashed away earlier. “Resuming cooperation with the IAEA is key to a successful diplomatic agreement to finally resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities,” he told the agency’s board of governors Tuesday.

A large majority of the Iranian parliament voted Wednesday to sever all ties with the IAEA. The motion is yet to be approved by the supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, who often dismisses such parliament decisions.

Mr. Trump says American envoys will meet with Iranian counterparts next week. Yet he is also indicating that a new nuclear pact, including IAEA inspections, might not be needed. “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” he said Wednesday. “I said Iran will not have nuclear. Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come.”  

Israelis say the Iranian nuclear program was set back by years. The Mossad and other intelligence agencies are tracking down enriched uranium and other aspects of the Iranian program that could have survived the strikes. “We destroyed the Iranian nuclear project,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said Tuesday. “And if someone in Iran will try to reconstruct this project, we will act with the same determination and might to undermine any such attempt.”