13 min ago
US vice president deflects when asked if administration knows location of Iran’s enriched uranium
From CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo and Samantha Waldenberg
US Vice President JD Vance sidestepped when asked if the Trump administration knows where Iran’s highly enriched uranium is located during an interview on Fox News.
President Donald Trump has said US strikes on Saturday “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Sunday morning that it was “way too early” to comment on whether Iran still retains some nuclear capabilities.
Vance said the location of the uranium wasn’t the important question, adding: “Our goal was to bury the uranium, and I do think the uranium is buried.”
CNN has reported that early assessments raise questions over whether the US destroyed the bulk of the country’s enriched nuclear material with the weekend strikes.
“The goal was to eliminate the enrichment and eliminate their ability to convert that enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon. I actually just, I think that’s an important point,” Vance said.
“If they, in fact, moved the 60% highly enriched uranium, the big concern, and this is, again, what we destroyed, is their ability to enrich uranium, if they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90% and further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon,” he continued.
Touting the American strikes on Iran as a success, Trump has said numerous times that the key nuclear sites were completely “obliterated,” however, the US appears to have held back its most powerful bombs against one of the three facilities included in the operation, raising questions about whether it finished the job.