Pentagon officials said on Sunday that three of Iran’s nuclear sites had suffered “severe damage” from the US strikes overnight that have prompted a furious response from Tehran and spurred fears of more dangerous escalations across West Asia.
President Donald Trump said the US military joined Israel’s war against Iran to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and claimed success, saying that three nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated”. The full extent of the damage to the sites was not immediately clear, and top Pentagon officials later said that it was too soon to say whether Iran still retains some
nuclear ability.
Iranian officials said they were working to assess the scale of the damage to facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan from the strikes that hit early Sunday local time.
In a news conference on Sunday morning, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, said the initial battle damage assessment indicated that all three sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction” and that a final assessment would take time. A senior US official acknowledged that the attack on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility, but severely damaged it.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth was asked about concerns of a prolonged conflict. “This is most certainly not open-ended,” he told the same news conference, adding that Trump had given him “a focused, powerful and clear mission” in the strike on Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, lashed out at the US for undercutting recent diplomatic efforts — and rejected calls by European leaders to return to the
negotiating table.
He said that Iran “reserves all options to defend its security interests and people”, but declined to be more specific — including about whether Iran would retaliate against US military bases in West Asia.
Hours after the US strikes, Iran launched more than 40 missiles towards Israel, wounding 23 people and destroying apartment buildings and homes in three cities.
The Iranian parliament approved closing the Strait of Hormuz, a potential chokepoint for oil shipments, but the country’s top security body is required to make a final decision, Iran’s press TV reported.
The US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites were not a preamble to regime change, Hegseth said on Sunday, adding that Washington has sent private messages to Tehran encouraging negotiation.
Officials kept operation “Midnight Hammer” highly secret. Seven B-2 bombers flew for 18 hours from the US into Iran to drop 14 bunker-buster bombs, Gen. Caine told reporters.
In total, the US launched 75 precision-guided munitions, including more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, and more than 125 military aircraft, in the operation against three nuclear sites, Caine said.
New York Times News Service