Intel Suggests Iranian Nuclear Program Set Back ‘One To Two Years’, Pentagon Spox Says

Pentagon intelligence assessments suggest that Iran’s nuclear program was set back by “one to two years” by U.S. strikes on the regime’s key nuclear facilities, Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters Wednesday.

The strikes on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites in Iran on June 21 “severely degraded” Iran’s capabilities and willingness to build a nuclear weapon, and the specific timeline came from intelligence assessments “inside the department,” Parnell said during a Pentagon press conference. The effectiveness of the strikes was hotly debated in the days after the dust settled, with President Donald Trump initially claiming that the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities while the corporate press seized on a leaked preliminary intel report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) indicating the damage to Iran’s nuclear program was minimal.

“All of the conversations that we’ve had since Operation midnight Hammer with our allies all around the world, but certainly also in the region, they say a couple of things: they share our sentiments about the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the fact that we have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said during the conference. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that, and I think their intelligence shares that conclusion.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe