WASHINGTON (AP) — Pentagon leaders laid out new details Thursday about military tactics and explosives to bolster their argument that U.S. attacks had destroyed key Iranian nuclear facilities, but little more emerged on how far back the bombing had set Tehran’s atomic program.
In a rare Pentagon news briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, worked to shift the debate from whether the nuclear targets were “obliterated,” as President Donald Trump has said, to what they portrayed as the heroism of the strikes as well as the extensive research and preparation that went into carrying them out.
“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said in an often combative session with reporters.
It was the latest example of how Trump has marshaled top administration officials to defend his claims about the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes. At stake is the legacy of the Republican president’s intervention in the brief war between Israel and Iran, as well as the future of American foreign policy toward Iran.
Pentagon gives little detail on status of Iran’s highly enriched uranium
Hegseth appeared less confident that the strikes got all of Iran’s highly enriched nuclear material.
Asked repeatedly whether any of it was moved to other locations before the U.S. attack, Hegseth acknowledged that the Pentagon was “looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.”
He added, “I’m not aware of any intelligence that says things were not where they were supposed to be” or that they were moved.
Satellite imagery showed trucks and bulldozers at Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment site, the main target of the bombings, days before the strikes, which occurred between 6:40 p.m. and 7:05 p.m. EDT Saturday. Experts said enriched uranium stocks can be moved in small canisters and are hard to find.
“It would be extremely challenging to try and detect locations where Iran may be hiding highly enriched uranium,” said Kelsey Davenport, director of nonproliferation policy at the nonpartisan Arms Control Association.
Trump expressed confidence that uranium was not pulled out before the attack.
“Nothing was taken out of facility,” he said on social media. “Would take too long,…