CIA director says Iran’s nuclear sites ‘severely damaged’
The head of the CIA has said U.S strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities and set them back years, diverging from a leaked intelligence report that angered President Donald Trump by downplaying the raid’s impact.
John Ratcliffe, the U.S spy agency’s director, said key sites had been destroyed, though he stopped short of declaring that Iran’s nuclear programme had been eliminated outright.
It comes a day after a leaked preliminary assessment from a Pentagon intelligence agency suggested core components of Iran’s nuclear programme remained intact after the U.S bombings.
Trump again maintained the raid had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The Republican president took to social media on Wednesday to post that the “fake news” media had “lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had”.
