Independent analysis has yet to verify claims by President Trump that heavily fortified Iranian sites were “totally obliterated” late Saturday.According to sources following the country’s nuclear program,rather than yielding a fast win,the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring iran doesn’t build a weapon.

Before Israel started its bombing campaign on June 13,International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remained in iran and were inspecting more than one site a day. They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran’s declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground.

According to Darya dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, there’s just a slim possibility that the US entering the war will convince Iran to increase IAEA cooperation.

“The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and openness don’t work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future,” she said.

IAEA inspectors haven’t been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location.

The IAEA called on a cessation of hostilities in order to address the situation. Director General Rafael mariano Grossi said that its 35-nation board will convene on Monday in Vienna.

Concerns Over Uranium Stockpile

President trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran’s underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow.

“The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don’t work…”

Satellite images of Fordow taken on Sunday and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters,possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge.

IAEA inspectors reported there were no radiation releases from the site,and no evidence of damage to the underground enrichment halls can be seen. US Air force General Dan Caine told a news conference on Sunday that an assessment of “final battle damage will take some time.”

Before the US intervention, images showed Israeli forces alone had met with limited success four days after the bombing began. Damage to the central facility in Natanz, located 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Tehran, was primarily limited to electricity switch yards and transformers.

Isfahan Nuclear site Damage

the US also joined in attacking the Isfahan Nuclear Technology and Research Center, located 450 kilometers south of Tehran. that was after the IAEA re-assessed the level of damage Israel had dealt to the facility. The agency wrote late on Saturday that, based on satellite images and communications with Iranian counterparts, Isfahan appeared “extensively damaged.”

According to Tariq Rauf, the former head of the IAEA’s nuclear-verification policy, the latest bombing now complicates tracking Iranian uranium even further. The IAEA’s central mission is to account for gram-levels of uranium around the world and to ensure it isn’t used for nuclear weapons.

“It will now be very tough for the IAEA to establish a material balance for the nearly 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, especially the nearly 410 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium,” he said.

Inspectors acknowledged last week that they’d lost track of the location of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile as Israel’s ongoing military assaults are preventing its inspectors from doing their work.

IAEA inspectors saw that uranium inventory-enough to make 10 nuclear warheads at a clandestine location-at Isfahan. But the material, which could fit in as few as 16 small containers, may have already been spirited off site.

“Questions remain as to where Iran may be storing its already enriched stocks,” Dozikova said. “These will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or US strikes.”

Iran’s ambitions to make the fuel needed for nuclear power plants and weapons are embedded in a heavily fortified infrastructure nationwide, far from being just static points on a map. Thousands of scientists and engineers work at dozens of sites.

Even as military analysts await new satellite images before determining the success of President Trump’s mission, nuclear safeguards analysts have reached the conclusion that their work is about to become substantially harder.

Robert Kelley, who led inspections of Iraq and Libya as an IAEA director, said that by bombing Iran’s sites, Israel and the US haven’t just disrupted the IAEA’s accountancy of Iran’s nuclear stockpile, they’ve also degraded the tools that monitors will be able to use.

That includes the forensic method used to detect the potential diversion of uranium. “Now that sites have been bombed and all classes of materials have been scattered everywhere the IAEA will never again be able to use environmental sampling,” Kelley said. “Particles of every isotopic description have infinite half-lives for forensic purposes and it will be impractical to sort out their origin.”