BBC News, Washington DC
The CIA head has stated that Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “severely damaged” and separated them from a leaked intelligence report, which reduced President Donald Trump to ange the impact of the raid.
John Ratcliffe, director of the US Spy Agency, said the major sites were destroyed, although he declared that Iran’s nuclear program was abolished.
The day after the initial assessment leaked from the Pentagon Intelligence Agency, it was suggested that the main components of the Iran’s nuclear program remained after the US bomb blasts.
Trump again stated that the raid had “amazed” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Republican President posted on social media on Wednesday that the “fake news” media lied “and completely presented the facts, which he had no”.
He said that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials held a “interesting and irrefutable” news conference to fight for the dignity of our great American pilots in Pentagon on Thursday.
This came when Israel and Iran seemed to respect a delicate ceasefire for a second day that Trump helped to interact this week on the 12th day of the war.
Speaking in the Hague, where he attended a NATO summit on Wednesday, Trump said about the attacks: “It was very serious. It was oblivion.”
He also said that he would probably seek a commitment from Iran to end his nuclear ambitions in the next week. Iran has not accepted any such conversation.
But US Middle East envoy Steve Witchoff told the US network NBC that there was direct and indirect communication between countries.
The statement of Ratcliffe appointed by Trump said that the CIA’s information “historically credible and accurate sources/method involves new intelligence that many major Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and they would have to be rebuilt in years”.
Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, has also appeared in support of Trump’s assessment on damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.
“If the Iranians chose to reconstruction, they would have to rebuild all three features (Natanz, Ford, Esfahan), which will probably take years to do,” he wrote on X.
The US operation consisted of 125 military aircraft, targeting three main Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.
The new satellite images shown six craters around the two entry points in the Fordo, with similar craters in this way – but it is not clear whether the deep underground atomic facilities were erased.
A report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was leaked on the US media on Tuesday, it was estimated that the US bombing had set the Iran’s nuclear program “only a few months”.
The US Defense Secretary stated that the evaluation was done with “low confidence”.
Officials familiar with the evaluation warned that it was an initial assessment that could turn into more information. There are 18 intelligence agencies in the US, which sometimes produce conflicting reports based on their mission and expertise.
United Nations Nuclear Watchdog chief Rafael Gossi said on Wednesday that there was an opportunity that Tehran had taken his highly rich uranium elsewhere because it came under the attack.
But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmel Bagi on Wednesday told Al Jazira: “Our atomic establishments have been badly damaged, it is sure.” He was not detailed.
A report by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission states that the strike on Fordo “destroyed the important infrastructure of the site”.
Damage on all sites, reports stated, have pushed Iran’s timeline back to “many years” for nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, Mehdi Mohammadi, advisor to the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said that shortly after the US attacks, it has been said that there was “no irreversible damage” in Fordo.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful. American intelligence agencies have earlier stated that Tehran was not actively manufacturing nuclear weapons.
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