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What is the right word to describe the results of a U.S. attack on Iran? President Trump has argued with some of his own intelligence community about that. Preliminary U.S. assessments vary and cast doubt on the extent of damage to Iran's uranium enrichment program. Here's NPR's Arezou Rezvani.
AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: A leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment says the damage to Iran's nuclear sites was limited, and the program was set back just a few months. But members of President Trump's cabinet have come out one by one and echoed the president as he continues saying the U.S. airstrikes wiped out Iran's key nuclear sites. CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a statement saying Iran's program had been, quote, "severely damaged," underscoring what President Trump said during a press conference at the NATO Summit yesterday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It was called obliteration. No other military on Earth could have done it.
REZVANI: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who accompanied Trump to the summit, was adamant about the destruction to Fordo, the most critical enrichment facility, built deep inside a mountain.
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MARCO RUBIO: We dropped 12 of the strongest bombs on the planet right down the hole in two places. Everything underneath that mountain is in bad shape.
REZVANI: In much the same way, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted a message on X saying Iran's nuclear sites had been destroyed and rebuilding would, quote, "likely take years," not months, as the leaked report asserted with low confidence. Gabbard's post comes just a few months after she appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, delivering a very different message.
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TULSI GABBARD: Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
REZVANI: That assessment is one Trump repeatedly dismissed in the days before he ordered the weekend attack. Beyond the U.S., Israel issued its own findings, saying the Fordo nuclear facility is now inoperable. Iran's foreign ministry acknowledged only that the facilities were badly damaged. Experts say there is another possibility - Iran may have moved its enriched uranium before the airstrikes, raising big questions about its ability to recover its program if it chooses to.
Arezou Rezvani, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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