‘Badly damaged’: Iran's first admission of damage to its nuclear facilities in US strikes

Iran has finally admitted that its nuclear facilities have in fact been “badly damaged” in the US strikes. Esmail Baghaei, the spokesman of Iran’s foreign ministry, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged.” However, he refused to share any details of the damage or the status of the nuclear facilities.
“Yes, our nuclear installations have been badly damaged. That’s for sure because [they have] come under repeated attacks,” he said.

“I have nothing to add on this issue because it’s a matter of technical issue,” he added, noting that the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) and other relevant agencies are taking note of it. The Iranian admission comes after some contradictory reports questioned the ‘obliteration’ of the country’s nuclear programme.

On June 22, the US carried out Operation Midnight Hammer and dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the three nuclear facilities in Iran—Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—from its B-2 stealth bombers. The US strikes were aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear programme, after the ongoing talks between the two countries failed to yield any result.

Baghaei also hailed Iranians for their resoluteness and said, “Our people were massacred by Israel’s aggression. That’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and they [Israel] have to be held accountable”.

“But the point is our people showed they are resolute in their defence of national security and sovereignty,” he added.

‘Victory for everybody,’ says Trump

Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump hailed his ‘success’ in bringing the war between Iran and Israel to an end. 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 rejected reports of an initial assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency and said that the findings were “inconclusive”. The report had claimed 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 programme has been put back decades,” he added.

‘Tehran would not try to rebuild its nuclear facilities’

Trump also added 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.

On being asked if the US would attack Iran again if it tried to resume its nuclear enrichment programme, Trump said, “Sure”.

Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, also told Fox News that the US and Israel had achieved their objective of “total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran.

Israel had also struck the Iranian nuclear facilities, saying that it aimed to thwart Tehran’s nuclear programme.

However, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is yet to conduct an assessment of Iran’s 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.