Despite Israeli wins against Iran’s nuclear program in 2025’s 12 Day War and in early 2026, its potential danger remains real, although not imminent, multiple sources have told The Jerusalem Post.
Among the positives are that Iran is currently not operating centrifuges to enrich uranium, its 60%- and 20%-enriched uranium are not yet easily accessible, and the vast majority of its nuclear facilities were rendered inoperable by the two major rounds of airstrikes, the Post has learned.
Those are no small achievements, setting back Iran’s nuclear program in many ways even more than during “pause” periods from 2003-2007 and from 2015-2018, when large portions of Tehran’s nuclear program were frozen although not dismantled, and other portions were still being clandestinely expanded.
Despite these achievements, the potential nuclear threat remains more serious than was hoped for in the periods immediately after the wars of 2025 and 2026, the Post also understands.
Therefore, while each facet of the nuclear program has been significantly improved for Israel, a gap of concern remains.
On the one hand, the vast majority of Iran’s estimated 20,000 centrifuges have been eliminated. On the other hand, a sizable number of centrifuges have survived deep underground.
Even if only a few hundred advanced IR-6 centrifuges could be salvaged and reconnected to their cascades at some medium-term point, that would be enough, at some future undefined point in time, to secretly weaponize enough uranium for a weapon, multiple sources have told the Post.
Tehran could develop clandestine digging strategy around enriched uranium, sources warn 'Post'
Separately, Tehran could develop a clandestine digging strategy to extract its 60%- and 20%-enriched uranium from underneath the rubble and deep underground in a way that circumvents US and other surveillance, multiple sources have said.
It is public knowledge from regular satellite reports from the Institute for Science and International Security and others that the Iranian regime is constantly adding structures to hide certain areas from ongoing satellite coverage.
In these reports, the Iranians are portrayed as digging in a wide number of areas, many of which are at a distance from the primary portion of any of the nuclear facilities that were attacked.
It could take months or even years of digging underground from a distance to smuggle out the 60%- or 20%-enriched uranium. But the possibility of secretly transferring as little as one-tenth of it might be a sufficient basis for an eventual nuclear bomb, according to the sources.
IAEA has been blind to Iran's nuclear program since 12-day June 2025 war, Grossi says
Keeping tabs on all of these issues is harder than ever in some ways. The International Atomic Energy Agency remains completely blind regarding Iran’s nuclear program since at least June 2025, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi told the agency’s Board of Governors on Monday.
“As stated in the report, [the] agency has neither received information from Iran regarding the status of its declared nuclear material or facilities nor had access to any of those facilities to conduct in-field verification activities,” he said. “Therefore, the agency was unable to discharge its safeguards responsibilities under the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] Safeguards Agreement at declared nuclear facilities in Iran.”
People familiar with the matter said they did not expect Iran to outsmart Israeli and American intelligence, but they also do not want to underestimate the Iranians’ frequently shocking resourcefulness.
According to the sources, this may mean that the crux of keeping Tehran’s nuclear program “in the box” may shift again to some extent from uranium enrichment to holding back any weapons development activities.
Although not in the spotlight as much, one of the main focuses of Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not only the enrichment sites but also those for converting enriched uranium into uranium metal, as well as for developing hemispheres to place them on a nuclear warhead.
Absent these and other assets, even a significant volume of weaponized uranium would not really help Iran because it would be unable to launch the uranium on a missile that could reach Israeli territory from a distance of 1,000 or more kilometers.
Preventing Iran from rebuilding such weapons facilities is now one of the primary missions of Israeli intelligence, people familiar with the matter have told the Post. So far, Tehran has failed to achieve any real progress in this area.
In essence, Iran’s nuclear program has been far more damaged than some critics have said. Yet there are also potential vulnerabilities for Israel regarding the surviving remainder of the program that senior Israeli defense officials and politicians have openly acknowledged immediately after each operation.
This means that Tehran’s nuclear program has been delayed by some years in some ways, along with its ability to rebuild the parts of the program that were struck. In other ways, however, Iranian ingenuity means that Israel remains threatened, even if the danger is reduced and less imminent.