Trump will decide on US involvement in Israel-Iran conflict within two weeks, White House says – live updates

Frank Gardner
Security correspondent

Iran’s nuclear programme, which it has always insisted is peaceful, has been severely damaged.

But it’s not destroyed completely.

Large amounts of highly enriched uranium – an essential component for building a nuclear bomb – are believed to be stored hundreds of feet below the Zagros Mountains at a heavily guarded site called Fordo.

Most analysts believe this could only be reached by repeated bombing by the US Air Force, using a weapon called a Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).

But – short of a change of regime in Iran – it would take close-up, visual confirmation on the ground and beneath the ground at Fordo, to be certain this suspect component had been destroyed.

That would require either human intelligence fed back by well-placed agents of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, or a Special Forces raid by commandos. Both are highly risky undertakings.

There also remains the risk that Iran may have dispersed material and machinery in other, unknown locations.

And furthermore that, when the dust from this conflict has settled, the Islamic Republic retains enough of the scientific knowledge to restart its nuclear activities and then race to build a crude nuclear bomb, believing it to be the best deterrent against future attacks.