Shortly after Iran’s supreme leader claimed the US ‘exaggerated’ damage to nuclear sites, a senior official said ‘serious damage’ was done.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told state television that the attacks had caused ‘serious damage’ to the nuclear facilities across the country.
Israel attacked Iran on June 13, targeting its nuclear sites, defence systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists.
The US stepped in on Sunday to hit Iran’s three most important sites with a wave of cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 bombers, designed to penetrate deep into the ground to damage the heavily fortified targets.
Trump said the attacks ‘completely and fully obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear programme, though the Ayatollah fired back that Trump exaggerated the damage, saying the strikes did not ‘achieve anything significant’.
There was speculation that Iran moved much of its highly-enriched uranium before the strikes. Iran did tell the UN nuclear watchdog they planned to move the uranium before the deadly strikes.
Even if that turns out to be true, the International Atomic Energy Agency director, Rafael Grossi, told Radio France International that the damage done to the Fordo site, which was built into a mountain, ‘is very, very, very considerable’.
Araghchi himself acknowledged that ‘the level of damage is high, and it’s serious damage’.
Trump previously boasted on Truth Social, claiming the Fordow nuclear sites in Iran had been ‘OBLITERATED’ in ‘one of the most successful military strikes in history’.
But early US intelligence cast some doubt on that statement, suggesting not all the facilities were actually destroyed, prompting Trump to have a meltdown, and Defence Chief Pete Hegseth to yell at reporters.
Trump accused both CNN and the New York Times, which reported on the alleged failure, of teaming up ‘in an attempt to demean’ the strikes.
Hegseth, furrowing his brow, told reporters in the Pentagon: ‘You– and I mean specifically you, the press – because you cheer against Trump so hard… You want him not to be successful so badly that you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.
‘You hope maybe they weren’t effective, the way the Trump administration has represented them isn’t true, so you make half-truths, spin leaked information into every way you can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind.’
Did Iran actually have nuclear weapons?
Iran is transparent about having a nuclear programme, but insists it has not developed nuclear weapons or warheads.
Tehran is a signatory of an important international accord designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, known as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The treaty, which came into force in 1970, has 191 signatories. Israel is not one of them, but more on that later.
Since Trump pulled the US out of the treaty in 2018, Iran has ramped up production of fissile material — stuff that could be used, one day, to make a nuclear bomb.
Under a 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and to maintain a uranium stockpile of 300 kilograms.
However, since Israel’s strikes on Iranian cities and nuclear sites on June 13, Iran’s parliament has approved a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA, which is the UN’s nuclear inspector.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.