Iran Confirms of Severe Damages to its Nuclear Facilities in US Bombing
NEW DELHI, June 25: Days after US claims, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei confirmed on Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities had been “badly damaged” in American strikes over the weekend.
Baghaei refused to go into detail but conceded the Sunday strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker buster bombs had been significant. “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he said, even as the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran appeared to be holding on Wednesday.
His comments just after U.S. President Donald Trump said the damage to Iranian nuclear sites from missile strikes over the weekend was severe, though he also acknowledged that the available intelligence on the matter was inconclusive. Some agencies, however, had claimed that the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities set back Tehran’s programme by only a matter of months, citing a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment through sources.
But the White House rejected the assessment. “The intelligence was very inconclusive,” Mr Trump told reporters before joining a NATO summit in the Netherlands capital The Hague. “The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests.” Later, during the same round of comments, Mr Trump argued that Iran’s nuclear deal had been set back “basically decades, because I don’t think they’ll ever do it again.”
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran on Tuesday had taken a rocky start, giving rise to cautious hope that it could lead to a long-term peace agreement even as Tehran insisted it would not give up its nuclear programme. The ceasefire took hold on Tuesday, the 12th day of the war between Israel and Iran, with each side initially accusing the other of violating it until the missiles, drones and bombs finally stopped.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire, said it was going “very well.” “They’re not going to have a bomb and they’re not going to enrich,” Trump said about Iran. But the Iranian parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based UN watchdog that has been monitoring the Iranian nuclear programme for years.
Ahead of the vote, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticised the IAEA for having “refused to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities” that were carried out by the United States on Sunday. “For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme will move forward at a faster pace,” Qalibaf told lawmakers.
In Vienna, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he had already written to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the American strikes and Grossi said his inspectors needed to reassess the country’s stockpiles. “We need to return,” he said. “We need to engage.”
The American strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said had “completely and fully obliterated” the country’s nuclear programme. Trump’s special envoy to the Mideast, Steve Witkoff, had said on Tuesday that Israel and the US had now achieved their objective of “the total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran, and Iran’s prerequisite for talks – that Israel end its campaign – had also been fulfilled. “The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”
At the NATO summit, when asked about a US intelligence report that found Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take “years” to rebuild. Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Wednesday his country’s assessment was also that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “significantly damaged” and its nuclear programme “set it back by years.”
Grossi said he could not speculate on how bad the damage was but that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were well known. “The technical knowledge is there, and the industrial capacity is there,” he said. “That no one can deny, so we need to work together with them.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
