More than two months of coordinated military strikes by the United States and Israel against Iranian nuclear infrastructure have failed to meaningfully slow Tehran’s nuclear development, leaving the timeline for Iran to build a nuclear weapon unchanged from last summer, according to a declassified US intelligence assessment cited in reporting from Reuters.
Per Reuters’ Tuesday reporting, which drew on two anonymous sources familiar with the intelligence, US agencies previously estimated that prior to Washington’s June 2025 pre-war airstrikes, Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium and assemble a functional nuclear device in a window of three to six months. Following those initial June attacks on key Iranian nuclear sites at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, intelligence analysts adjusted that timeline to between nine months and one year. Despite the full-scale air campaign that began in late February, that projection has not shifted, indicating the sustained bombing has not delivered the strategic outcome US and Israeli leaders promised.
The conflict itself kicked off on February 28 while the Trump administration was still in nuclear negotiations with Tehran. From the moment of the June 2025 preemptive strikes, the impact of the attacks has been a subject of sharp public dispute. Then-President Trump claimed the operation, codenamed “Midnight Hammer”, had completely “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, declaring the issue effectively resolved ahead of his planned post-strike policy shift.
When asked about prospects for restarting nuclear negotiations in mid-2025, Trump downplayed the need for a new diplomatic deal, telling reporters: “We may sign an agreement…I don’t care if I have an agreement or not…We destroyed the nuclear… It’s blown up to kingdom come. I don’t care very strongly about it.”
Even within the Trump administration, his sweeping claims faced immediate pushback. The Pentagon contradicted his assertion that the entire program had been destroyed, instead stating the June strikes had set Iran’s nuclear progress back by up to two years — double the timeline adjustment confirmed by the latest intelligence reviewed by Reuters. This new assessment confirms what independent analysts have argued since the start of the campaign: that repeated US and Israeli airstrikes have failed to deliver a lasting, substantive setback to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Speaking with Middle East Eye, regional security experts note that any path to a diplomatic resolution will require Washington to offer substantial sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for new limits on its nuclear activities. The US has offered a shifting set of justifications for launching the full-scale war, from protecting anti-government protesters inside Iran to eliminating Tehran’s ballistic missile arsenal and disabling its nuclear program. But in a Tuesday interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump centered the conflict on the nuclear issue, downplaying the urgency of the ballistic missile threat.
“Look, missiles are bad, but yeah, and they do have to cap it, but this is about they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, adding that any end-of-war deal would require Iran to completely remove its stockpile of highly enriched uranium from the country.
While the air campaign launched February 28 has targeted a broad range of Iranian assets including conventional military units, state government institutions, and core industrial infrastructure, Israel has prioritized additional strikes on dispersed nuclear-related sites. The current crisis traces its roots back to 2018, when Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral nuclear agreement reached with Iran three years earlier. Under the terms of the JCPOA, Iran had agreed to cap uranium enrichment at 3.67 percent — a level suitable for civilian energy production — and open all its nuclear facilities to rigorous international inspections from the United Nations, in exchange for broad relief from crippling economic sanctions.
After withdrawing from the deal, the Trump administration reimposed and tightened sweeping sanctions on Iran. In response, Tehran gradually abandoned its JCPOA-enforced limits, building up a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, just a short technical step away from weapons-grade material. Iran has repeatedly stated that its entire nuclear program is intended for peaceful civilian purposes, including energy production and medical isotope manufacturing. The late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also issued a formal religious fatwa prohibiting the development and possession of nuclear weapons. Many independent analysts, however, argue Iran has deliberately positioned itself as a nuclear threshold state, maintaining the technical capacity to rapidly develop a nuclear weapon should it choose to do so.
This reporting comes from Middle East Eye, an independent outlet covering global affairs focused on the Middle East and North Africa region.