‘Badly damaged’: Iran’s first admission of damage to nuclear sites in US strikes
In what is probably the first admission of the impact of the US strikes, Iran’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that its nuclear facilities have been “badly damaged” by the American attack.
The US strikes were aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear programme, after the talks between the two countries came to halt amid Israel conflict. (Reuters)
The Iranian foreign ministry’s spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.”
However, he refused to go into any further detail about the damage or the status of the nuclear facilities.
The US military had deployed its B-2 stealth bombers to drop bunker-buster bombs on the three nuclear facilities in Iran – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan.
The Iranian admission comes against the backdrop of several reports of ‘obliteration’ of the country’s nuclear programme.
Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump revelled in his ‘success’ of bringing an end to the war between Iran and Israel. Speaking to reporters at the Hague, he said that his decision to join Israel’s strikes against Iran ended the war, calling it a “victory for everybody”.
Trump also dismissed the reports of an initial assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency and said that the findings were “inconclusive”. The report had stated that the US strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear programme by months.
“The intelligence was very inconclusive. The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests,” Trump told reporters.
“It was very severe. It was obliteration. Iran’s nuclear program has been put back decades,” he added.
He also exuded confidence in saying that Tehran would not try to rebuild its nuclear facilities and would instead opt for a diplomatic path towards reconciliation. “I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” he said.
Upon being asked if the US would once again attack Iran if it tried to resume its nuclear enrichment programme, Trump said, “Sure”.
Israel had also struck the Iranian nuclear facilities, saying that it aimed to thwart Tehran’s nuclear programme. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said that Israel had brought the Iran’s nuclear sites “to ruin”.
However, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is yet to conduct an assessment of the Iranian nuclear facilities.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said that his “number 1 priority” was to get his inspectors back to Iran’s nuclear sites to assess the impact of the US and Israeli military strikes, and verify its stockpile of enriched uranium.
