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The US strikes under Operation Midnight Hammer appear to have "significantly hampered Iran's nuclear program," a former White House Middle East coordinator in the Biden administration, who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, told CNN on Thursday.
Brett McGurk said preliminary Battle Damage Assessments (BDAs) indicate that key targets, including the Fordow facility, were successfully hit. Fordow is Iran's most important nuclear enrichment facility, buried deep inside a mountain to protect it from attack.
McGurk explained that when the military conducts a BDA, it typically follows three phases: Phase I assesses the physical damage inflicted on the target sites. Phase II assesses the functional impact on the target. Phase III zooms in to include all available intelligence and assesses the overall impact on the system that was targeted, in this case, Iran's nuclear program.
McGurk said this morning's Pentagon briefing showed that the first two phases of the assessment deemed the operation a success, but the more complex "level three" assessment is still in progress and will include input from other parts of the US government.
McGurk said that, given what he knows about the attacks, he is "fairly confident" that Iran's program suffered a significant setback, even if the full picture will take time to emerge.
Asked about the use of the word "disappear," McGurk said presidents often speak differently than military or intelligence officials.
"We honestly don't know all the details, but I think the mission went as planned. The news I saw there was that those munitions went into those shafts, and that means that Fordow is probably pretty much destroyed and unusable. Of course the centrifuges, if they were there, can't spin again ," he said.
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