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The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a much-awaited report Wednesday on the results of the U.S. airstrike on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility on Sunday, saying it made the site “inoperable.”
President Donald Trump had said earlier Wednesday at the NATO summit in Brussels that Israeli intelligence would shortly produce a report on the results of the U.S. airstrikes.
The Prime Minister’s Office then issued a brief statement summarizing Israel’s findings on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC):
The devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.
The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.
Trump celebrated the joint Israeli-American victory over Iran in what he called the “12 Day War,” a reference to Israel’s lightning victory over several hostile neighbors in the Six Day War of 1967.
Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, hitting nuclear sites and the Iranian military’s command structure for over a week until the U.S. joined the effort with B-2 strategic bombers last Saturday night into Sunday morning.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
This reporting is very worrisome, and not reassuring. Israel’s statement is intentionally imprecise. Its strongest part only states that he combined US and Israeli military strikes set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by “many years”. What is “many”? Two or three years? Trump’s statements are worse – mostly bluster. Completely missing is any information on perhaps 800 pounds of unaccounted-for highly enriched nuclear fuel which could be used to make nine nuclear weapons within a few weeks.
The US strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s “critical infrastructure” rendering (only?) the enrichment facility “inoperable” (for how long?). Military spokesmen, some previously identified, and some unnamed leakers are being accused of treason by the President’s press secretary. It is incomprehensible that the government does not know who they are. The overall picture is that we still do not know much of what we need to.