Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday that the uranium enrichment facility at Fordow was “seriously and heavily damaged” by U.S. bombers on June 21. He said Iranian officials are still assessing the full extent of the damage.
“No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged,” Araqchi said during an interview with CBS News on Tuesday.
“The Atomic Energy Organization [AEOI] of the Islamic Republic of Iran is currently undertaking evaluation and assessment, the report of which will be submitted to the government,” he said. He was notably evasive when asked if AEOI inspectors have actually been able to penetrate the rubble of Fordow to conduct an examination.
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Araqchi did not go as far as agreeing with President Donald Trump’s assessment that the Iranian nuclear program has been “totally obliterated,” but he also seemed less confident than International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafel Grossi that Iran could resume enriching uranium in a “matter of months.”
“One cannot obliterate the technology and science for enrichment through bombings. If there is this will on our part, and the will exists in order to once again make progress in this industry, we will be able to expeditiously repair the damages and make up for the lost time,” Araqchi said. “No one at the moment says that the facilities have remained intact. It is the technology and the know-how that is still there,” he said.
He did not comment on how far Israel might have set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions by eliminating many of its top nuclear scientists.
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Araqchi continued Iran’s improbable claims that its nuclear program was for purely peaceful purposes, even though it was enriching uranium to levels far above any conceivable civilian purpose.
“We have done a lot for our enrichment industry to thrive. Our scientists have done a lot. Our people have borne a lot of the course of the past 20 years, during which Iran has undergone heavy sanctions because of its peaceful nuclear program,” he claimed.
“Our scientists have been assassinated, there have been instances of sabotage in our nuclear facilities, and now Iran’s peaceful nuclear program has turned into a matter of national pride and glory,” he said.
“We will definitely continue to convince the international community, and the countries concerned, that our program, our nuclear program, will remain absolutely peaceful,” he said, portraying Iran as an innocent victim of unwarranted U.S. and Israeli “aggression.”
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Araqchi even dragged out the hoary hoax of the “fatwa,” or religious order, supposedly written by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that eternally forbids Iran from developing nuclear weapons. There is no such fatwa, and even if there was, it would hardly be accepted as proof of Iran’s innocence anywhere outside of Tehran.
“The people will not easily back down from enrichment and will not put it away,” Araqchi concluded, comically pretending the people of Iran have some control over the actions of their brutal dictatorial regime.
The exact status of the uranium enrichment site at Fordow has become a matter of heated political contention in the United States. Democrats and their media outlets have struggled to portray damage from the U.S. strike on June 21 as minimal, seizing on “evidence” such as an incomplete preliminary intelligence estimate that was illegally leaked to the press, and more recently an intercepted phone conversation between Iranian officials that supposedly described the damage as much less serious than Iran expected.
The Trump administration pushed back against this narrative by citing more complete U.S. intelligence estimates, the Israeli military, and now Iran’s foreign minister that said Fordow was severely damaged despite its formidable fortifications, and its uranium centrifuge farm is out of business, at least for the time being.
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