Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said his country will not abandon its nuclear program and that it must now rethink how to protect its facilities after strikes by Israel and the U.S.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities and that his country’s strikes alongside Israel’s had caused them “monumental damage”. He said the U.S. will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb, and urged Tehran to enter talks.
Araghchi told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed the nuclear program was transparent and under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and that Iran had shown its commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty—but that still was not enough to protect it.
The top Iranian diplomat said the attacks will have “serious and profound effects on the course of the nuclear program,” adding: “We need to rethink how we protect our nuclear facilities.”
Trump Struck Iran Enrichment Capacity
Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes. But it had stockpiles of uranium enriched to a level close to that required for nuclear weapons, and well beyond what is necessary for energy.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Trump said, announcing the completion of the U.S. strikes on Saturday, June 21.
“Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
Israel accused Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, an ambition that it said was months or even weeks away from fruition if the leadership in Tehran gave the order to do so.
It struck Iran for several days, including hits on nuclear sites and scientists, before a fragile Trump-brokered ceasefire took hold on June 24.
U.S. intelligence assessments led to similar conclusions to Israel, but did not see the Iranian nuclear weapons program as active.
Trump Iran Intelligence Dispute
Trump’s assertion that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” the key Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz was called into question by an early intelligence assessment that said key elements of the program were not destroyed.
In particular, Iran may have moved some of its highly enriched uranium out of harm’s way before the strikes, and its centrifuges—needed for the enrichment process—had also mostly survived.
The White House hit back at the assessment, reported by CNN, The New York Times, and others, calling it “flat-out wrong” and leaked by an “anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community”.
“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN.
“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
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