"All I have to do is leave Iran." That was Donald Trump on Wednesday, standing in the Oval Office, speaking to reporters about gas prices. The remark was casual, almost throwaway, the kind of line a president delivers when he has decided a problem is solved and wants to move on. The problem is that Iran's enriched uranium, buried in tunnels beneath Isfahan that no bomb in America's arsenal can reach, has not received the same memo.

There is a particular kind of danger that attaches to a war that is never won. The United States began its campaign against Iran on February 28 with three objectives: to destroy Iran's nuclear program and to destroy its missile program. Then, of course, it turned into a 'hole of mess' where it got deeper, every single day that passed. Thirty-two days into the conflict, with three aircraft carriers on station, gas prices passing $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022 in America, and the president telling reporters that he is planning to leave "maybe two weeks, maybe three," the question that arises is: how many of those objectives have been met?

The answer, with respect to the most important one, is a disturbing one. The president announced that Iran's nuclear program was "completely obliterated." The truth, as revealed through satellite imagery, IAEA reports, and nuclear physicists, is rather different.

In this article, we will explore some important developments released just. There have been several significant events that we should examine to understand the direction of the US-Israel-Iran conflict.

June 2025, eight months prior to the existing war, was when US and Israeli warplanes attacked three of Iran's major nuclear enrichment centers. Natanz and Fordow were badly damaged. The attack was seen as a knockout blow for Iran's nuclear plans. However, satellite imagery captured on 9 June 2025, just days before this attack began, reveals something that fundamentally complicates this picture: a flatbed truck carrying 18 blue containers entering a tunnel entrance at the Isfahan underground site. An analysis done by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in collaboration with the French newspaper Le Monde, determined that "it was likely that the containers held Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium up to 540 kilograms of material at 60 percent uranium-235, one step away from being weapons-grade."

Iran, it appears, had moved the material before the bombs fell.

Iran possessed 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity as of the eve of the June 2025 strikes. The purity level required for weapons-grade uranium is 90%. According to the IAEA, 42 kg of 60%-enriched uranium is theoretically sufficient, if further enriched, to make a nuclear device.

The Isfahan tunnel complex, where most or all of the uranium is now believed to be stored, remained largely intact following the June 2025 strikes. The entrances to the tunnels have been damaged, but the facility was not........

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