It could take months for the US and its allies to determine how much damage Saturday’s bombings made to Iran’s nuclear program, according to the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) – a member of Capitol Hill’s ‘Gang of Eight’ (lawmakers who have access to the country’s most sensitive intelligence) – says he’s only aware of one “source” that affirms President Trump’s claim that all of Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.”
“But keep in mind: A single source is no source, you got to have multiple sources,” Crawford told Lyndsay Keith on Dr Phil’s Merit TV Tuesday morning. “We’re still waiting for some human verification but certainly there’s been a very good disruption. We don’t know the timeline, we hope it’s totally obliterated but we still have questions we need to answer.”
Iran’s Uranium Stockpiles Unaccounted For
One of those “questions” that remain is: What is the status of Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium? Last week, Trump said Iran could build a nuclear weapon with the semi-enriched uranium it had in store, but the intelligence community can’t confirm if that material was destroyed in Saturday’s bombings or if Iranian officials moved some of that material away from the sites that were hit by US ordinance.
Crawford says he can’t confirm what happened to or, even if the uranium in question is destroyed or not, but he says it’s “common sense” that Iran would seek to stow away the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon.
“If I thought that someone was going to target my operation I would probably move some vulnerable elements of that, that made that target, a target.”
He said that US and Israeli intelligence agencies can’t confirm “where any of that material has been moved to,” if it was indeed moved out of the bombing’s way. He says the Iranians may have taken advantage of Trump’s warning prior to the US bombing.
“It’s kind of common sense to assume that, given the advance notice that they had, or perceived, that they would probably do something like that.”
