Caine said initial battle damage assessments indicated that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction, but he declined to speculate whether any Iranian nuclear capabilities might still be intact.
“I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time,” Vance said, adding that the US “had no interest in boots on the ground.”
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.
The operation pushes the Middle East to the brink of a major new conflagration in a region already aflame for more than 20 months with wars in Gaza and Lebanon and a toppled dictator in Syria.
DAMAGE TO FACILITIES
With the damage visible from space after 30,000-pound US bunker-buster bombs crashed into the mountain above Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, experts and officials are closely watching how far the strikes might have set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Caine said initial battle damage assessments indicated that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction, but he declined to speculate whether any Iranian nuclear capabilities might still be intact.
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi was more cautious, saying while it was clear that US airstrikes hit Iran’s enrichment site at Fordow, it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground there.
A senior Iranian source told Reuters on Sunday that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow, the site producing the bulk of Iran’s uranium refined to up to 60 percent, had been moved to an undisclosed location before the US attack there.
Tehran has vowed to defend itself and responded with a volley of missiles at Israel that wounded scores of people and destroyed buildings in its commercial hub Tel Aviv.
But, perhaps in an effort to avert all-out war with the superpower, it had yet to carry out its main threats of retaliation – to target US bases or choke off the quarter of the world’s oil shipments that pass through its waters.
