The head of France's foreign intelligence service said on Tuesday that some of Iran's highly enriched uranium stocks were destroyed by American and Israeli strikes, but there was no certainty on where the rest was now located.
Speaking in an interview on LCI television, Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE, said all aspects of Iran's nuclear program had been put back by several months following the air strikes, but while Paris had indications where Iran's highly enriched uranium stocks were, there would be no certainty until the United Nations atomic watchdog returned to the country.
Unknown how much uranium was destroyed
In late June, Israeli officials told The Jerusalem Post that there was no question that the storage facilities for the 400kg highly enriched Iranian uranium have been hit in the US and Israeli airstrikes; however, it is not known how much uranium was destroyed nor if Iran can reach the uranium that was not damaged.
Israeli officials told the Post that they are almost certain Iran was not able to take uranium out of the nuclear enrichment facilities before or after the strikes. Still, it is impossible to say with complete certainty.
US President Donald Trump said at a press conference at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, that all the enriched uranium Iran had was inside the sites that were bombed. "It is very difficult to move it," he read from a statement from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.
In his speech, Trump stressed the level of devastation the US strikes caused at Iran's nuclear facilities and also compared the US strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities to the US bombing of Hiroshima, alleging that the US strikes on the nuclear facilities ended the war between Israel and Iran, similar to how World War II ended.