(Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Politico on Wednesday that Iran was “much further away from a nuclear weapon” following a U.S. strike on Tehran’s three main nuclear sites over the weekend.
Rubio’s comments come after Reuters and others reported Tuesday that those U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities set back Tehran’s program by only a matter of months, citing a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment through sources.
Both Trump and the White House rejected the assessment.
The president reiterated on his Truth Social account that the Iranian nuclear sites were completely destroyed, while the White House pointed Reuters to a statement by spokesperson Karoline Leavitt to CNN, which first reported the assessment, that the “alleged” conclusion was “flat-out wrong.”
“The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action,” Rubio told Politico on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
“That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it,” Rubio added, referring to the damage done to the Iranian nuclear sites.
Rubio dismissed the media reports as “false” and said they did not capture the full picture, according to Politico.
A ceasefire brokered by Trump between Iran and Israel appeared to be holding on Wednesday, a day after both countries signalled that their air war had ended.
Israel launched the surprise air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders. Iran, which denies trying to build nuclear weapons, retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites and cities.
(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Bernadette Baum)
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