The Department of Defense (DOD) estimates that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back at least a year after the U.S. military bombed three vital nuclear sites last month.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters on Wednesday that intelligence assessments inside the department indicate that Iran’s nuclear program has been degraded by “one to two years.”
“I think we’re thinking probably closer to two years, like degraded their program by two years,” Parnell said during the briefing.
He added that “we believe, and certainly, all of the intelligence that we’ve seen have led us to believe that Iran’s — those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated,” referring to the nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.
The latter assessment is in line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assessment of the damage at those targeted sites.
An early Pentagon intelligence assessment reportedly found that Tehran’s nuclear program was set back by only months. Hegseth has called the leaked assessment premature.
The U.S. military bombed Iran on June 21, following more than a week of back-and-forth strikes between Tehran and Israel.
President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the attacks destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities and halted the regime’s nuclear ambitions.
“It was obliterating like nobody’s ever seen before. And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
The president has remained open to restarting nuclear negotiations with Iran, but he said a deal to restrain Tehran’s nuclear enrichment is not necessary and also suggested additional U.S. strikes are possible if there is renewed cause for concern from Tehran.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said during an interview on Sunday that Iran could start enriching uranium again in a “matter of months.”
It’s also unclear if the U.S. destroyed Iran’s existing stockpiles of enriched uranium. Even once it has the nuclear material, Iran would need to build a weapon and delivery system. Before the strikes, experts and U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that could take two years or more.
Last Thursday, Grossi said Iran’s nuclear facilities “suffered enormous damage” following U.S. strikes.
“I think ‘annihilated’ is too much, but it has suffered enormous damage. I know there’s a lot of debate about the degree of annihilation, total destruction, and so on; what I can tell you, and I think everyone agrees on this, is that very considerable damage has been done,” Grossi said in an interview with French broadcaster RFI.