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Days before the US air strikes, Iran removed about 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium from its nuclear facilities, sources familiar with Israeli intelligence told The New York Times (NYT). According to them, the move was Tehran's response to US President Donald Trump's repeated threats to join Israel's military operation against Iran.

The enriched uranium was stored at the Esfahan underground nuclear complex in small containers that could be taken out in the trunks of ten cars. Satellite images from Maxar Technologies also showed 16 trucks near the Fordo nuclear facility. However, it is not known what they were taking out. It is possible that they could have contained giant centrifuges for enriching uranium, but it would be unlikely that they could all be evacuated in such a short time, a US official told the NYT.

Satellite imagery shows apparent US bunker-buster strikes on Iran's Fordow site—3 sets of craters visible.

But crucially, June 21 images show trucks & heavy machinery sealing entrances with soil & moving equipment—showing Iran was trying to prepare for strike & protect assets. https://t.co/aCnpgdjwlp

— Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) June 22, 2025

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, emphasized in an interview with CNN that the Iranian authorities are not hiding - they are trying to protect the enriched uranium. According to him, the last time the agency's inspectors saw Iranian uranium was a week before the Israeli shelling began. When asked by the NYT whether he believed that the uranium had been moved to another location, Grossi replied:"Yes." He previously noted that, technically speaking, uranium enriched to 60 percent is almost equivalent to 90 percent - the level needed to make a nuclear weapon.

On the night of June 22, the US Air Force carried out a massive airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow and Esfahan. US B-2 bombers dropped at least six 15-ton bunker-busting bombs on them, while submarines fired about 30 Tomahawk missiles. Trump claimed that “tremendous damage” had been done to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “Destroyed is the right term!” he wrote on the social media network Truth Social.

However, Vice President J.D. Vance told NBC that he was not “100 percent” certain that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been completely destroyed. “I’m not going to get into the classified intelligence about what we saw on the ground in Iran, but we saw a lot, and I’m pretty confident that we have significantly delayed their nuclear weapons development, and that was the goal of this attack,” Vance said. Speaking to ABC, Vance added that the Iranians no longer have the facilities to use uranium to make a functioning weapon, but acknowledged that Washington does not know what is currently happening with Iran’s uranium. “We will be working in the coming weeks to do something about this fuel, and that is one of the things that we will be talking to the Iranians about,” the US vice president said.

According to sources in The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration has informed Iran that the strikes on its nuclear facilities are a one-time event and not “the start of a war to change power,” and has called for a return to talks. Iranian President Masoud Peshmerga has vowed that Tehran will respond “appropriately” to the US attacks.