Iranian officials disclose nuclear material transfer; US and Israel may face a "prolonged battle".

According to a report from Qatar's Al Jazeera on June 21, the U.S.-based defense think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP) pointed out in their latest joint assessment that a senior commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps previously claimed that materials had been moved to safe locations to prevent nuclear materials from being destroyed. The report stated that "protecting Iran's nuclear materials through concealment" would make "efforts by the U.S. or Israel to destroy these materials more difficult." The report noted that this statement was clearly intended to send a signal to the West that the complete destruction of Iran's nuclear materials would be a long, arduous, and possibly futile search operation, and therefore the West should choose to negotiate with Iran.