Unprecedented US strikes have wrecked Iran’s nuclear program, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday, though other officials cautioned the extent of damage at the three sites was unclear.

Iran’s leaders struck a defiant tone and vowed to respond, while an advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed their stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed.

International concern intensified over the surprise attacks deepening conflict in the Middle East after Israel launched its bombing campaign against Iran earlier this month.

President Donald Trump said he wanted peace and urged Iran to end the conflict after he launched massive overnight strikes on a key underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, along with nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz.

“We devastated the Iranian nuclear program,” Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing, adding that the operation “did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people.”

Standing beside Hegseth, top US general Dan Caine said “it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”

“Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”

Protests in Tehran

People gathered Sunday in the center of Tehran to protest against US and Israeli attacks, waving flags and chanting slogans, state TV showed.

Trump claimed total success for the operation in an address to the nation hours after the attack, and Vice President JD Vance followed up on Sunday morning.

“We know that we set the Iranian nuclear program back substantially last night, whether it’s years or beyond,” he told ABC.

But he also suggested Iran still had its highly enriched uranium.

“We’re going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel,” he said. “They no longer have the capacity to turn that stockpile of highly enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium.”

In Tehran, AFP journalists said aircraft had roared over the city for the first time since Israel’s initial attacks.

“Even if nuclear sites are destroyed, game isn’t over, enriched materials, indigenous knowledge, political will remain,” Khamenei advisor Ali Shamkhani said in a post on X.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed that the United States would “receive a response” to attacks during a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the official IRNA news agency.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN that there were clear signs of the hit on Fordo.

But “no one, neither us (or) nobody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged,” he said.

The IAEA said it had not detected any increase in radiation levels at the nuclear sites and Tehran said Sunday there were no signs of contamination.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prayed for Trump at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday, after hailing the strikes as a move that would “change history.”

Retaliation risk

The Israeli military was also checking the results of the US raid on the deeply buried nuclear facility in Fordo, with a spokesman saying it was “too soon” to know if Iran had removed enriched uranium from the site.

The main US strike group was seven B-2 Spirit bombers that flew 18 hours from the American mainland to Iran, Caine said.

In response to the attack, which used over a dozen massive “bunker buster” bombs, Iran’s armed forces said they targeted multiple sites in Israel including Ben Gurion airport, the country’s main international gateway near Tel Aviv.

Israeli rescuers said at least 23 people were wounded.

In Jerusalem, Claudio Hazan, a 62-year-old software engineer, said he hoped the US intervention would hasten an end to the Iran-Israel war.

“Israel by itself would not stop… and it would take longer,” he said.

At least nine members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed Sunday in Israeli attacks on central Iran, local media reported, as fighting between the two foes continued.

The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, which had been mediating Iran-US nuclear talks, criticized the US move and called for de-escalation.

The leaders of France, Germany and Britain on Sunday urged Iran “not to take any further action that could destabilise the region.”

Following his address, Trump warned Iran against retaliation. Iran and its proxies have previously attacked US military bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

Iran’s Huthi allies in Yemen on Sunday repeated their threat to resume attacks in the Red Sea if Washington joined the war, saying they were ready to target US ships and warships.

The US president had stepped up his rhetoric against Iran since Israel first struck the country on June 13, repeating his insistence it could never have nuclear weapons.

AFP

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