{"id":1447,"date":"2025-06-26T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T15:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/us-military-officials-say-irans-facilities-are-destroyed-after-strike\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T15:36:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T15:36:00","slug":"us-military-officials-say-irans-facilities-are-destroyed-after-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/26\/us-military-officials-say-irans-facilities-are-destroyed-after-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"US military officials say Iran\u2019s facilities are \u2018destroyed\u2019 after strike"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine have responded to\u00a0a leaked intelligence report suggesting the military\u2019s strikes<\/a> against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities likely put the country back by mere months.<\/p>\n

In a Thursday morning news conference from the Pentagon, the two officials maintained that Iran\u2019s nuclear programme had been destroyed, echoing President Donald Trump\u2019s version of events.<\/p>\n

But that contradicted a preliminary report, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), saying the June 22 bombing campaign was a relatively minor setback for Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities, which could be restored within months.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump delivered the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success resulting in the ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war,\u201d said Hegseth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of decisive military action, President Trump created the conditions to end the war, decimating \u2014 choose your word \u2014 obliterating, destroying Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing reliable conclusions about the effect of the US strikes is difficult only days after they took place.<\/p>\n

President Trump has insisted, however, that the US strikes delivered a \u201cdevastating\u201d attack. He has also told reporters that questioning his assessment of the strike was not only unpatriotic but also made the pilots who dropped the bombs \u201cvery upset\u201d.<\/p>\n

While Hegseth and Caine spoke, Trump encouraged his followers on the platform Truth Social to watch their remarks, calling it \u201cone of the greatest, most professional, and most \u2018confirming\u2019 News Conferences I have ever seen!\u201d<\/p>\n

He also wrote that news outlets like The New York Times and CNN would be \u201cfiring the reporters who made up the FAKE stories\u201d on the Iran bombing campaign, though there is no evidence to support that assertion.<\/p>\n

A day earlier, on Wednesday, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe said the US attacks in Iran caused severe damage to Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew intelligence from \u2018historically reliable\u2019 methods had shown that \u2018several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,’\u201d Ratcliffe said in a statement, which lacked further details.<\/p>\n

A military assessment<\/h2>\n

The June 22 bombing campaign marked the US\u2019s only direct intervention in what Trump has dubbed the 12-Day War between Iran and Israel.<\/p>\n

The conflict started on June 13, when Israel launched a series of attacks on military targets in Iran, killing several generals and scientists in its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

Israel argued the attacks were necessary to hobble Iran\u2019s efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon. Iran, meanwhile, has maintained it has never sought to create a nuclear weapon and instead uses its nuclear enrichment programme to create civilian energy. It responded with a missile barrage of its own against Israel.<\/p>\n

The US has long been an ardent ally of Israel, but in the early days of the conflict, Trump avoided committing the US to any direct involvement. That changed on June 22, when he sent seven B-2 bombers to drop \u201cbunker-buster\u201d munitions on three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow.<\/p>\n

A ceasefire was declared a few days later.<\/p>\n

But questions have endured about the efficacy of the US\u2019s intervention. On Thursday, Hegseth and Caine sought to put those questions to rest with a forceful presentation.<\/p>\n

Standing in front of a poster with images of Iran\u2019s Fordow facility, Caine gave reporters a walkthrough of the bombs used in the attack, how the mission was carried out and who comprised the bomber crews.<\/p>\n

He also played a video of one of the bunker-busting bombs in action.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go,\u201d Caine said.<\/p>\n

He then offered a breakdown of what gave the US military confidence about the success of its mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s what we know following the attacks and the strikes on Fordow,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst, that the weapons were built, tested and loaded properly. Two: The weapons were released on speed and on parameter. Three: The weapons were all guided to their intended target and intended aim points. Four: The weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth, meanwhile, largely focused his comments on the media\u2019s response. A former Fox News host, he criticised his fellow journalists for \u201chunting for scandals all the time\u201d and failing to acknowledge \u201chistoric moments\u201d under President Trump.<\/p>\n

When pressed by a reporter about what had changed in their understanding of the June 22 strike, Hegseth reiterated the Trump administration\u2019s position that sites like Fordow had been dealt a fatal blow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could use the word obliterated. He could use defeat, destroyed, assess, all of those things. But ultimately, we\u2019re here to clarify what these weapons are capable of,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone with two eyes, some ears and a brain can recognise that kind of firepower, with that specificity at that location and others is going to have a devastating effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth and Trump both denied on Thursday that Iran could have moved its stockpile of enriched uranium before the US strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not aware of any intelligence that I\u2019ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be \u2014 moved or otherwise,\u201d Hegseth said.<\/p>\n

Ambiguity remains<\/h2>\n

Still, there have been conflicting reports about just how much damage was sustained by Iran\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times on Thursday published a report saying European governments had assessed that Iran\u2019s uranium stockpile had been redistributed to sites outside of Fordow before the attack.<\/p>\n

In his first public comments since the war began, Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also said on Thursday that Trump overstated<\/a> the results of the strikes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe American president exaggerated events in unusual ways,\u201d Khamenei said, adding that the US \u201cgained nothing from this war\u201d.<\/p>\n

By his account, the US bombing campaign \u201cdid nothing significant\u201d to Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n

While Thursday\u2019s briefing with Hegseth and Caine offered details about the weaponry used in the June 22 attacks, analysts say it lacked evidence to justify the Trump administration\u2019s assertions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe presser on US strikes on Iran was an orchestrated narrative, very much focused on the storytelling,\u201d said Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we know the actual facts of the matter yet. They say they detailed how many bombs were dropped, how they went through ventilation shafts, but they didn\u2019t share any actual evidence that the facility was, in their words, obliterated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine have responded to\u00a0a leaked intelligence report suggesting the military\u2019s strikes against Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities likely put the country back by mere months. In a Thursday morning news conference from the Pentagon, the two officials maintained that Iran\u2019s nuclear programme … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}