President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were adamant Thursday that Iran wasn’t able to move any highly enriched uranium prior to Saturday’s US strikes on three nuclear facilities — with Trump insisting “nothing was taken out” before the bombings.
Trump, 79, dismissed suggestions Iran may have been able to spirit away its cache in the days prior to the attacks after satellite imagery emerged of cargo-style trucks lined up outside Fordow — one of the three targeted sites — late last week.
“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts. Nothing was taken out of facility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!” he added, echoing his earlier claims that the US acted too quickly for Iran to prepare in advance.
Hegseth, too, doubled down on the extent of the US-caused destruction, telling a Pentagon press briefing that he saw no sign Tehran had managed to relocate any uranium ahead of the blasts.
“I’m not aware of any intelligence that I’ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise,” Hegseth said during the combative briefing.
He noted that the Pentagon was “looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where.”
Hegseth, who was joined by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, also accused lefty media outlets of downplaying the success of the strikes, which Trump has repeatedly insisted “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
The defense chief ripped the leak of a preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that suggested the 14 30,000-pound heavy-duty bunker-buster bombs the US dropped may have only set back Iran by months.
“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth declared.
He said the DIA assessment — which was initially leaked Tuesday to the likes of CNN and the New York Times — was low confidence and ripped reporters for focusing on the assessment in an apparent bid to undermine the administration.
“It’s in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad,” Hegseth said.
“There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that … because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined.”
With Post wires
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