OAN Staff Abril Elfi
11:19 AM – Thursday, July 3, 2025
The Pentagon announced that U.S. airstrikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities in late June have set back Iran’s nuclear program by “one to two years,” likely closer to two, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.
Parnell emphasized that the damage was severe, echoing President Donald Trump’s description of the sites as being “completely obliterated,” though he noted the timeline is “probably closer to two years.”
This estimate also contradicts the earlier “leaked” Defense Intelligence Agency assessment indicating only a few months of delay, which was given to CNN.
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Nonetheless, on Wednesday, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell explained the Pentagon’s assessment to reporters.
“We have degraded their program by one to two years, at least intel assessments inside the Department [of Defense] assess that,” Parnell told reporters. “We believe that Iran’s nuclear capability has been severely degraded, perhaps even their ambition to build a bomb,” he added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi stated earlier this week that there was severe damage to the Fordow facility, though he also insisted that “the technology and knowhow is still there.”
“No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged,” Aragchi said during a CBS interview this week.
However, Parnell also reiterated that “all of the intelligence that we’ve seen (has) led us to believe that Iran’s – those facilities especially, have been completely obliterated.”
Additionally, even anti-Israel news outlets, such as Al Jazeera, reported that satellite imagery shows infrastructure at Fordow being “repaired,” but IAEA confirmed centrifuges are non-operational and underground labs suffered “enormous” damage.
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