ISTANBUL 

US Republican Rep. Bill Foster said Friday that US strikes against Iranian nuclear sites may not have hit existing stockpiles of enriched uranium, which could be used to produce weapons with the strength of a Hiroshima bomb in “a very small breakout time.”​​​​​​​

“I was very disappointed that we learned very little about the inventory of high-enriched uranium — 60 percent enriched uranium — its whereabouts and what that meant for the breakout time to Iran’s first nuclear device,” Foster, a former PhD physicist who spent 25 years in a national research lab, said after being briefed by top Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also briefed Senate lawmakers Thursday.

“The 60 percent enriched material, while not weapons-grade, is weapons-usable. The Hiroshima device was a mixture of 50 percent and higher enriched uranium. And that worked pretty well,” he said, according to The Hill website.  

Foster stated that the goal of the mission “from the start, was to secure or destroy that material,” stating “that’s what we have to keep our eyes on.”

“There is, I think, frankly, a very over-optimistic portrayal of what was and was not accomplished by this issue, because we do not have understanding and control of where all that material is,” he said.  

Israel-Iran conflict

A 12‑day conflict between Israel and Iran erupted June 13 after Tel Aviv launched airstrikes on Iranian military, nuclear and civilian sites, killing at least 606 people and injuring 5,332, according to Iran’s Health Ministry.​​​​​​​ 

Tehran launched retaliatory missile and drone strikes, killing at least 29 people and wounding more than 3,400, according to figures released by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The US dropped six bunker-buster bombs on the Fordo nuclear facility on June 22 and launched dozens of submarine-based cruise missile attacks on two other sites in Natanz and Isfahan as part of its campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

The conflict came to a halt under a US-sponsored ceasefire that took effect June 24.