Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, scoffed at President Trump’s claims of success following U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites this weekend.
In a Sunday interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Himes said there’s no way U.S. officials could have enough information yet to make that assessment.
“Look, that’s insane. That’s insane. You don’t need to be an intelligence professional to know that we have no idea whether these strikes were successful,” the Democrat said, when asked about the Trump administration’s claims of success and whether the world “is a safer place” following the strikes.
The bombs targeted three nuclear sites in Natanz, Esfahan and Fordow, located inside a mountain. Six “bunker buster” bombs were reportedly dropped on Fordow, while more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles were launched at the other two sites.
Trump announced the operation on Saturday evening, saying they were a “spectacular military success,” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
“Now, if what you’re looking for is a big boom and a large hole in the ground, I have very little doubt that our bunker-busters did a big boom and a very large hole in the ground,” Himes told anchor Kasie Hunt.
“But, Kasie, we don’t know, sitting here right now, whether the highly enriched uranium was in the Fordow facility or in the Natanz facility. We have no idea,” he added. “In the coming weeks, we will develop a more specific idea, but we have no idea in the world right now whether these strikes were in any way successful.”
Himes raised the possibility that the Iranians could have moved some of the 60 percent-enriched uranium, in anticipation of a possible attack.
“Look, I think all three facilities are probably smoking rubble right now, but the Iranians are not dumb people, right? There’s some chance that, given that this raid was telegraphed for a couple of days, that they might have thrown a couple hundred kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium into the back of a truck and moved it somewhere else,” Himes said.
If that’s the case, he continued, “you have got the possibility — and I will stress possibility here — that there’s a lot of highly enriched uranium sitting underneath a hornet-mad regime that has decided that the only way we’re going to forestall this in the future is to actually sprint towards a nuclear weapon.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated on Monday that the Trump administration has a “high degree of confidence” that its strikes against Iran hit locations where enriched uranium was being stored amid questions about whether officials in Tehran had relocated the nation’s stockpile.
“We are confident, yes, that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated, as the president said in his address to the nation on Saturday night,” Leavitt said on ABC.
“And we have a high degree of confidence that where those strikes took place is where Iran’s enriched uranium was stored,” she added. “The president wouldn’t have launched the strikes if we weren’t confident in that. So this operation was a resounding success.”
The New York Times reported there was evidence Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the Fordow site in recent days, citing two Israeli officials. The Times also cited text messages from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency indicating Iran had moved its uranium stockpile.
