CIA believes Iran's nuclear program has been ‘severely damaged'
CIA Director John Ratcliffe has said that it will take years for Iran to rebuild its nuclear program following US strikes on uranium enrichment sites. His comments came after days of uncertainty about the extent of the damage to the facilities in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, which were targeted by American bunker-busting bombs on June 22.
'The CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,' Ratcliffe said in a statement on Wednesday.
'This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,' he added.
While President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed that the strikes had 'obliterated' Iran's ability to manufacture nuclear weapons, US media later reported that the damage may have been overstated.
Early assessments by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) suggested the attack had failed to destroy the core components of Iran's nuclear program and had only set it back by months, according to multiple outlets citing sources familiar with the findings. Israeli officials, however, told Axios that the strikes inflicted 'very significant' damage.
Trump, for his part, accused US media of attempting to 'demean' the strikes, which he later compared to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
The US participated in Israel's bombing campaign, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as an effort to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Tehran, which denies having a military nuclear program, has vowed to continue enriching uranium for research and civilian purposes. Russia has condemned the strikes and accused the West of spreading disinformation about Iran's nuclear activities.
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