CIA Director John Ratcliffe said there is credible intelligence that Iran's nuclear program has suffered severe damage in the US strikes on it. He added that it will take years to repair the damage, the agencies reported.
"This includes (information obtained through) time-proven reliable and accurate sources and methods that several key Iranian nuclear sites have been destroyed and will take years to rebuild," Ratcliffe said.
The CIA continues to analyze the results of the attacks, he added.
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard agreed with Ratcliffe. In an article in Ex, she said that the eventual restoration of the sites bombed by Washington in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan would take years. But it was not clear from both statements what findings the new assessment announced by her and the CIA is based on.
Gabbard's position and that of the CIA support President Donald Trump's claims that the facilities have been completely destroyed. He described the US attacks as a deadly blow to Iran's nuclear program.
However, this is not what a preliminary report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), revealed by American media on Tuesday, indicates, according to which the Islamic Republic's nuclear program has been set back only a few months. The White House strongly criticized the publication of the report's conclusions, which are classified as "top secret", and described them as "fake news".
On the sidelines of the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump told reporters that he believed the bombing of the nuclear sites was a "perfect operation" that led to their complete destruction.
On Sunday, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Kaine, was more restrained in his comments, saying that the sites had suffered "serious damage and destruction.".