A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.
Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.
The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations.
Some Israeli officials said they also believed that the Iranian government had maintained small covert enrichment facilities so it could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.
