{"id":233422,"date":"2025-07-03T01:13:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T01:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233422\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T01:13:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T01:13:13","slug":"us-says-its-strikes-degraded-irans-nuclear-programme-by-one-to-two-years-israel-iran-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233422\/","title":{"rendered":"US says its strikes degraded Iran\u2019s nuclear programme by one to two years | Israel-Iran conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> The Pentagon has announced that United States military strikes against Iran set back the country\u2019s nuclear programme by one to two years, an assessment that follows President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> claims that the programme was \u201cobliterated\u201d.<\/p>\n

Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell said on Wednesday that the three Iranian nuclear facilities targeted by Washington were destroyed, echoing the president\u2019s remarks. He praised the strikes as a \u201cbold operation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have degraded their programme by one to two years at least,\u201d Parnell told reporters. \u201cIntel assessments inside the department assess that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the US sent a group of B-2 stealth bombers to Iran on June 21,\u00a0Trump has consistently lashed out at any suggestions that the attacks did not wreck the country\u2019s nuclear facilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has maintained that Iran\u2019s nuclear programme has been \u201cobliterated like nobody\u2019s ever seen before\u201d.<\/p>\n

An initial US intelligence assessment, leaked to several media outlets last month, said the strikes failed to destroy key components of Iran\u2019s nuclear programme and only delayed its work by months.<\/p>\n

For its part, Tehran has been coy about providing details about the state of its nuclear sites.<\/p>\n

Some Iranian officials have said that the facilities sustained significant damage from US and Israeli attacks. But Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a> said last week that Trump had \u201cexaggerated\u201d the impact of the strikes.<\/p>\n

There has been no independent assessment of the aftermath of the US attacks, which came as part of a 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Visual analyses via satellite images<\/a> cannot fully capture the scope of the damage at the underground sites, especially the country\u2019s largest enrichment facility, Fordow.<\/p>\n

Another persistent mystery is the location and state of the stockpiles containing Iran\u2019s highly enriched uranium.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s nuclear agency and regulators in neighbouring states have said they did not detect a spike in radioactivity after the bombings, as might be expected from such strikes.<\/p>\n

But Rafael Grossi<\/a>, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not rule out that the containers holding the uranium may have been damaged in the attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know where this material could be or if part of it could have been under the attack during those 12 days,\u201d Grossi told CBS News last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Satellite images showed trucks moving out of Fordow before the US strikes.<\/p>\n

Grossi also said that Iran could be enriching uranium again in a \u201cmatter of months\u201d. Enrichment is the process of enhancing the purity of radioactive uranium atoms to produce nuclear fuel.<\/p>\n

The facilities targeted in the US strikes had been under constant IAEA surveillance. But now, Iran\u2019s nuclear programme is in the dark, away from the scrutiny of international inspectors.<\/p>\n

After the war, the Iranian parliament passed a law suspending cooperation<\/a> with the IAEA, citing the agency\u2019s failure to condemn the US and Israeli attacks on the country\u2019s nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n

The Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on \u201cinstallations containing dangerous forces, namely dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Before the war started<\/a> on June 13, Tehran claimed to have obtained Israeli documents that show that the IAEA was passing off information to Israel about Iran\u2019s nuclear programme \u2013 allegations that the agency denied.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, the US State Department called on Iran to allow the IAEA access to its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is \u2026 unacceptable that Iran chose to suspend cooperation with the IAEA at a time when it has a window of opportunity to reverse course and choose a path of peace and prosperity,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Israel launched a massive attack<\/a> against Iran on June 13 without direct provocation, claiming that it was preemptively targeting Iran\u2019s push towards a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Tehran denies seeking a nuclear bomb. Israel, meanwhile, is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

Israeli air strikes during the conflict killed hundreds of Iranian civilians, including nuclear scientists and their family members, as well as top military officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Iran responded with barrages of missiles that left widespread destruction and killed 29 people in Israel.<\/p>\n

Ten days into the war, the US joined<\/a> the Israeli campaign and bombed Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities. Tehran, in turn, launched a missile strike against a US air base in Qatar, an attack that resulted in no casualties.<\/p>\n

Hours later, Trump announced a ceasefire<\/a> between Israel and Iran. Officials in both countries have described the outcome of the war as a \u201chistoric victory\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel has similarly claimed that Iran\u2019s nuclear programme was destroyed. But Iran has insisted it foiled Israel\u2019s goals by maintaining the stability of its government as well as its nuclear and missile programmes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington, DC \u2013 The Pentagon has announced that United States military strikes against Iran set back the country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[32,774,837,1167,839,12,12617,8041,1814,49,978,286,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-233422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","12":"tag-middle-east","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nuclear-energy","15":"tag-nuclear-weapons","16":"tag-palestine","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-us-canada","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114786651560331234","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}