Iran ‘much further away’ from developing nuclear weapons following US strike: US secretary of state

By Zehra Nur Celik

ANKARA (AA) – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said Iran is now “much further away from a nuclear weapon,” despite intelligence reports indicating that three of Iran’s nuclear facilities were not destroyed in a recent US strike.

Speaking to Politico’s Dasha Burns during the NATO summit, Rubio presented a more cautious view than President Donald Trump, who has claimed that the nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan were “completely destroyed.”

“The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action,” Rubio told Politico.

“That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it,” Politico cited Rubio as saying.

CNN claimed that a preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear program delayed its progress by only a few months.

The US intelligence community is expected to release further evaluations in the coming days and weeks, though it’s common for different intelligence agencies to reach differing conclusions in their analyses, according to Politico.

Rubio rejected the media coverage as “false,” saying it failed to reflect the complete situation.

“I hate commenting on these stories, because often the first story is wrong and the person putting it out there has an agenda,” he said.

“That story is a false story, and it’s one that really shouldn’t be rereported because it doesn’t accurately reflect what’s happening,” Rubio added.

Israel began its air campaign against Iran's military and nuclear facilities on June 13, striking several of the same sites hit by the US on Sunday.

The US struck the Fordo and Natanz facilities with bunker-buster bombs dropped from B-2 stealth bombers, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Sunday.

Over two dozen submarine-launched cruise missiles targeted the Isfahan site, he added.

Trump has maintained that the sites "were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it."

"It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR! " he said on social media Tuesday.