The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has said that US strikes have severely damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, distancing himself from leaked intelligence that angered the US president and reported scant results, the BBC writes.
The director of the US spy agency, John Ratcliffe, said that key sites had been destroyed, but stopped short of saying that Iran’s nuclear program had been completely halted. Ratcliffe’s statement follows the uproar over a leaked Pentagon report that said key elements of Iran’s nuclear program had been left intact after the US bombing.
After the Pentagon report was released, US President Donald Trump insisted that the strike had “totally destroyed” Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Republican president wrote on social media on the 25th of June that
“fake news” creators had “lied and misrepresented facts that they did not have.”
Trump said that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior US military officials would hold a press conference at the Pentagon on the 26th of June “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots”.
Meanwhile, Israel and Iran continue to hold the ceasefire. Trump said at a NATO summit in Hague that he intends to demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear program during talks scheduled for next week. Iran denies that such an agreement is being discussed.
Ratcliffe’s statement said that the CIA information includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source, and indicates that several key Iranian nuclear sites have been destroyed and that their restoration would take years”.
The US strike on the 21st of June involved 125 military aircraft, which targeted three main Iranian nuclear sites – Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan. New satellite images show craters from the blasts, but
it is unclear whether the strikes have destroyed laboratories and factories deep underground.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said on the 25th of June that Tehran may have moved much of its enriched uranium elsewhere since the strikes began. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera that nuclear facilities had been severely damaged, but did not provide further details.
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