Missing uranium: Will Trump’s Iran strike echo Bush’s hollow WMD war?

There are fears that the intervention in the Israel-Iran war could turn out like the doomed 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Even as US airstrikes have dealt substantial damage to Iranian nuclear facilities, there is no evidence that those strikes neutralised Iranian nuclear capabilities. Such concerns are backed by increasing evidence that Iran had moved highly enriched uranium out of those facilities before US strikes.

The fears of the US intervention now becoming a 2003 invasion-like scenario have risen with the Donald Trump administration’s failure to answer in once voice whether the US intelligence agencies confirmed that Iran actually making a nuclear weapon.

Comparisons have been drawn with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as that invasion was launched to locate and neutralise weapons of mass destructions (WMDs) of then-Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. However, no WMDs were discovered and then-US President George W Bush expressed regret about launching the invasion based on incorrect intelligence inputs and flawed analyses.

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The biggest reason behind comparisons with the invasion of Iraq is the potentially flawed intelligence and analysis that drove the decision to attack Iran.

In March, US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said that Iran was not yet developing a nuclear weapon under order from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. This month, Trump contracted him, who was later apparently contracted by his spokesperson.

Trump on June 17 contradicted Gabbard and said, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”

Trump on June 21 said that Gabbard’s assessment that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon was “wrong”. The same day, White House contradicted Trump and said that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within two weeks — implying that the development had not yet started.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday cast biggest doubts about the intelligence —if any— that drove US strikes.

Rubio told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan that “it’s an irrelevant question” when she asked him whether the US intelligence agencies confirmed that Iran was actually making nuclear weapons under orders from Khamenei. When she kept pressing, Rubio said that “it doesn’t matter if the order was given” by Khamenei.

Instead, Rubio flagged Iran’s enrichment of uranium to near-weapons grade level and construction of underground nuclear sites and said that these were proof of Iran’s intention to develop a nuclear weapon.

When Brennan persisted with the questioning about the intelligence behind US strikes, Rubio gave the clearest indication that there was no intelligence confirmation about Iran was actually making a nuclear weapon under orders from Khamenei.

“I was simply asking if we had intelligence that there was an order to weaponize, because you have said weaponization ambitions, which implies they weren’t doing it,” said Brennan.

Rubio replied, “Well, we have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon.”

Enriched uranium appears to have been relocated

Even as Trump said that all three sites attacked were “obliterated”, there is little to no evidence to prove that.

Instead, there is mounting evidence that Iran moved 400 kg of highly enriched uranium out of the harm’s way before US strikes. Officials have spoken of such a relocation. Satellite imagery has shown 16 trucks at Fordow in the days leading up to strikes. It appears that these trucks carried the uranium to their new location.

“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” Vice President JD Vance told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, referring to a batch of uranium sufficient to make nine or 10 atomic weapons. Nonetheless, he contended that the country’s potential to weaponize that fuel had been set back substantially because it no longer had the equipment to turn that fuel into operative weapons.

Separately, Israeli officials told The New York Times that their assessment says that even though US strikes caused serious damage, sites were not completely destroyed. They also said that there was evidence of uranium and equipment being moved out of these sites before US strikes.