U.S. officials say that strikes conducted on three key Iranian nuclear sites have devastated its nuclear program, but independent experts analyzing commercial satellite imagery say the nation's long-running nuclear enterprise is far from destroyed.
"At the end of the day there are some really important things that haven't been hit," says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who tracks Iran's nuclear facilities. "If this ends here, it's a really incomplete strike."
In particular Lewis says the strike doesn't seem to have touched Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium.
"Today, it still has that material and we still don't know where it is," he says.
"I think you have to assume that significant amounts of this enriched uranium still exist, so this is not over by any means," agrees David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has closely tracked Iran's nuclear program for years.
The independent assessments stand in stark contrast to congratulatory statements from the Trump Administration in the wake of the strikes.
