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Factcheck.org's Own Expert Disagrees With Them On Fate Of Iran's Centrifuges
Factcheck.org may not have a truth-o-meter like PolitiFact or a Pinocchio scale like The Washington Post, but their Tuesday article by Alan Jaffe still claimed that President Trump was false in saying that the B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities “obliterated” their program. One of Jaffe's main points of evidence was the fate of Iran's centrifuges, but even his own selected expert has contradicted him elsewhere.
The crux of Jaffe’s argument was, “the key nuclear sites — Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan– were not ‘obliterated,’ nor was damage done ‘to all Nuclear sites in Iran.’ And Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability is still viable, experts say.”
He also pointed to the infamous CNN and New York Times articles as his main source, “A five-page, preliminary, classified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, said the U.S. bombing of Iran’s three sites sealed off entrances of two facilities but didn’t destroy their underground buildings and set back Iran’s nuclear program by just a few months, CNN and the New York Times reported on June 24. People familiar with the report told CNN the facilities’ centrifuges, which enrich uranium, remained largely ‘intact.’”
Jaffe also reported that both Israel and the IAEA believe Iran moved uranium from the Fordo facility in preparation for an attack.
He also quotes, “David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told NPR, ‘I think you have to assume that significant amounts of this enriched uranium still exist, so this is not over by any means.’”
That’s funny because if you click Jaffe’s link, he also tells NPR, contrary to CNN’s claim about centrifuges, “I think the purpose of the attack was to take out centrifuges and infrastructure and they feel they accomplished that."
The very next paragraph in NRP’s story has Albright claiming that the entrances Jaffe mentioned were sealed by Iran in preparation for an attack.
While Albright is cautious about declaring victory given the unknown location of enriched uranium stocks and possible centrifuges located elsewhere, his group is not as pessimistic as CNN, “Overall, Israel's and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack.” The IAEA has agreed.
On X, Albright wrote, “The time Iran would need to build even a non-missile deliverable nuclear weapon has increased significantly.”
Additionally, the words “low confidence” do not appear anywhere in Jaffe’s article.
Jaffe ends his essay by citing Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball with an opinion on how the strikes affected the political situation, ‘“The bottom line is that the combined Israeli and U.S. strikes have set Iran’s program back some months, but at the cost of obliterating trust between the key parties, strengthening Tehran’s resolve to reconstitute its sensitive nuclear activities, possibly prompting it to consider withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and possibly proceeding to weaponization,’ Kimball said.”
Jaffe’s article was published on Tuesday, but on Monday, Iran said it would remain a part of the NPT.
It is true that battle damage assessment takes some time, but there are also several good and, most importantly, nonpartisan reasons to believe the CNN and New York Times articles have serious problems.
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