The White House has been forced to defend a report issued by the Defence Intelligence Agency, which casts doubt on Trump’s claims he “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment plant
Donald Trump’s boast that he “obliterated” Iranian nuclear bunkers has been deemed “frankly absurd” by an expert, who is adamant the president “couldn’t possibly know.”
The White House has been forced to defend a report issued by the Defence Intelligence Agency, which casts doubt on Trump’s claims he “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant.
US B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, causing the entrance to collapse and damage to the structure, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, according to the assessment.
Anthony Glees, an academic in security and defence and a lecturer at the University of Buckingham, believes that unless Trump could “look deep into the caves”, he “couldn’t possibly know the damage” caused.
The expert told The Mirror: “I think we’ve learned to treat what President Trump says with skepticism at all times. He makes wild claims. I thought his ‘total obliteration’ claim of bullseye targets needed to be treated with some skepticism.
“The three main nuclear sites Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, particularly Fordo, are very deep underground, and even with these bunker- busting bombs, there is some question about how far down they can penetrate.
“Even with them, you couldn’t possibly know what damage they had done without going there and looking for yourself. And, of course, President Trump can look in all sorts of places, but he cannot look into a cave that deep, particularly one where the entrances to it have been blown up.”
Meanwhile, Trump defended his comments and rejected the intelligence assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.”
“It was obliteration, and you’ll see that,” Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was “very inconclusive” and described media outlets as “scum” for reporting on it.
Professor Glees believes it is “frankly absurd” to call the strikes an “obliteration”, as Iranians would have moved stockpiles of their uranium to other places.
He added: “People had been talking quite openly about bombing the Iranian nuclear sites, and the Iranians are not completely stupid. One of the first things they would have done is to remove the stockpiles of already enriched uranium to 60% to other places. So again, you couldn’t talk of a total bullseye ‘obliteration’, it is frankly absurd.
“We also know that President Trump has been highly dismissive of his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who originally told the world that Iran was some way off being able to make a nuclear weapon.
“When this was put him on Air Force One, he said basically she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. So if you don’t have faith in your intelligence services, it’s not enough to make predictions like this based on what you hope you’ve achieved or what your gut instinct is.”