Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday afternoon confirmed that his country's nuclear facilities were "badly damaged" by US airstrikes, Al Jazeera reported.
"Yes, our nuclear installations have been badly damaged," he admitted. "That’s for sure because [they have] come under repeated attacks." But, he told Al Jazeera, "I have nothing to add on this issue because it’s a matter of technical issue."
He did not provide further details, but stressed that "Iran’s right to nuclear peaceful energy remains intact. Iran has every right under the NPT [Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons] … to enjoy using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. And Iran is prepared to reserve that right under any circumstances."
The scope of the damage and location of the enriched uranium should be "secondary issues" for the international community, which Baghaei urged to "condemn these lawless acts by the United States."
While US officials "have been talking about diplomacy, they greenlighted the Israelis to attack Iran," he added, claiming that the US "torpedoed diplomacy" and that Israel must be "held accountable" for its "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity."
At the same time, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission announced that the "devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, have set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years."
It added: "This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material."
Earlier on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump claimed at a NATO conference that "Israel has guys who went in there after the hit, and they say it was total obliteration" after the US strikes. "The last thing Iran wants to do is enrich anything."
Prior to the conference, Trump said that Israel is preparing its own report on the results of the strikes.
Meanwhile, ABC News quoted two unnamed Israeli sources as saying that the results of the strike on Fordow are not good. One of the sources told ABC that it is still too early to know whether the strike was successful; much depends on how much enriched uranium was removed from the site before the strikes, and how many centrifuges can still be used. Final assessments could take months to complete, they said.
ABC claims that two people familiar with the findings told the network that the strikes sealed the entrances to two of the sites, but that the lower structures were left intact.
According toIMRA News: "On Friday, June 13th, literally hours after Israel attacked, Iran placed a large rush order with China for the equipment and supplies for the manufacture of ballistic missiles."
"Some of the off-the-shelf equipment is already on its way. It will only take a few months for the special-order equipment, such as the solid fuel mixers, to be supplied, as they are all repeat orders requiring no engineering work.
"Unless the ships are intercepted, Iran's experienced production teams could make 1,000 ballistic missiles from scratch in as little as half a year and 2,000 within a year."