CIA chief told lawmakers Iran nuclear program set back years with strikes on metal conversion site

WASHINGTON – CIA Director John Ratcliffe told skeptical U.S. lawmakers that American subject strikes destroyed Iran's lone metallic conversion installation and successful the process delivered a monumental setback to Tehran’s atomic program that would instrumentality years to overcome, a U.S. authoritative said Sunday.

The official, who spoke connected the information of anonymity to sermon the delicate intelligence, said Ratcliffe laid retired the value of the strikes connected the metallic conversion installation during a classified proceeding for U.S. lawmakers past week.

Details astir the backstage briefings surfaced arsenic President Donald Trump and his medication support pushing backmost connected questions from Democratic lawmakers and others astir however acold Iran was acceptable backmost by the strikes earlier past Tuesday’s ceasefire with Israel took hold.

“It was obliterating similar nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said successful an interrogation connected Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” ”And that meant the extremity to their atomic ambitions, astatine slightest for a play of time.”

Ratcliffe besides told lawmakers that the quality assemblage assessed the immense bulk of Iran's amassed enriched uranium apt remains buried nether the rubble astatine Isfahan and Fordo, 2 of the 3 cardinal atomic facilities targeted by U.S. strikes.

But adjacent if the uranium remains intact, the nonaccomplishment of its metallic conversion installation efficaciously has taken distant Tehran's quality to physique a weaponry for years to come, the authoritative said.

Rafael Grossi, caput of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Sunday connected CBS' “Face the Nation” that the 3 Iranian sites with “capabilities successful presumption of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium person been destroyed to an important degree.”

But, helium added, “some is inactive standing” and that due to the fact that capabilities remain, “if they truthful wish, they volition beryllium capable to commencement doing this again.” He said assessing the afloat harm comes down to Iran allowing successful inspectors.

"Frankly speaking, 1 cannot assertion that everything has disappeared, and determination is thing there," Grossi said.

Trump has insisted from conscionable hours aft 3 cardinal targets were struck by U.S. bunker-buster bombs and Tomahawk missiles that Iran's atomic programme was “obliterated.”

His defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said they were “destroyed.” A preliminary study issued by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, said the strikes did important damage to the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan sites, but did not wholly destruct the facilities.

As a effect of Israeli and U.S. strikes, Grossi says that “it is wide that determination has been terrible damage, but it’s not full damage." Israel claims it has acceptable backmost Iran’s atomic programme by “many years.”

The metallic conversion installation that Ratcliffe said was destroyed was located astatine the Isfahan atomic facility. The process of transforming enriched uranium state into dense metal, oregon metallization, is simply a cardinal measurement successful gathering the explosive halfway of a bomb.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio successful comments astatine the NATO summit past week besides suggested that it was apt the U.S. strikes had destroyed the metallic conversion facility.

“You can’t bash a atomic limb without a conversion facility," Rubio said. "We can’t adjacent find wherever it is, wherever it utilized to beryllium connected the map. You can’t adjacent find wherever it utilized to beryllium due to the fact that the full happening is conscionable blackened out. It’s gone. It’s wiped out.”

The CIA manager besides stressed to lawmakers during the legislature briefing that Iran’s aerial defence was shattered during the 12-day assault. As a result, immoderate effort by Iran to rebuild its atomic programme could present easy beryllium thwarted by Israeli strikes that Iran presently has small wherewithal to support against, the authoritative said.

Ratcliffe's briefing to lawmakers connected the U.S. findings appeared to mesh with immoderate of Israeli officials' conflict harm assessments.

Israeli officials person determined that Iran's quality to enrich uranium to a weapons-grade level was neutralized for a prolonged period, according to a elder Israeli subject authoritative who was not authorized to speech publically astir the matter.

Tehran's atomic programme besides was importantly damaged by the strikes sidesplitting cardinal scientists, harm to Iran's rocket accumulation manufacture and the battering of Iran's aerial defence system, according to the Israeli's assessment.

Grossi, and immoderate Democrats, enactment that Iran inactive has the know-how.

“You cannot undo the cognition that you person oregon the capacities that you have,” Grossi said, emphasizing the request to travel to a diplomatic woody connected the country's atomic program.

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AP writer Sam Mednick successful Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

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