Summary LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

Israeli prime minister, Iran president both claim victory

US airstrikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by months, initial US intelligence assessment finds

US tells UN Security Council that strikes ‘degraded’ nuclear program

WASHINGTON/TEL AVIV/ISTANBUL, June 24 (Reuters) – U.S. airstrikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capability and only set it back by a few months, according to a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, as a shaky ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump took hold between Iran and Israel.

Earlier on Tuesday, both Iran and Israel signaled that the air war between the two nations had ended, at least for now, after Trump publicly scolded them for violating a ceasefire he announced at 0500 GMT.

Sign up here.

As the two countries lifted civilian restrictions after 12 days of war – which the U.S. joined with an attack on Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities – each sought to claim victory.

Trump said over the weekend that the U.S. deployment of 30,000-pound bombs had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But that claim appeared to be contradicted by an initial assessment by one of his administration’s intelligence agencies, according to three people familiar with the matter.

One of the sources said Iran’s enriched uranium stocks had not been eliminated, and the country’s nuclear program, much of which is buried deep underground, may have been set back only a month or two. Iran says its nuclear research is for civilian energy production.

The White House said the intelligence assessment was “flat out wrong.” According to the report, which was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but did not collapse underground buildings, said one of the people familiar with its findings.

Some centrifuges still remained intact after the attacks, the Washington Post said, citing an unnamed person familiar with the report.

Trump’s administration told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that its weekend strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had “degraded” Iran’s nuclear program, short of Trump’s earlier assertion that the facilities had been “obliterated.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the attack on Iran had removed the threat of nuclear annihilation and was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its weapons program.

“We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles,” Netanyahu said.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country had successfully ended the war in what he called a “great victory,” according to Iranian media. Pezeshkian also told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Tehran was ready to resolve differences with the U.S., according to official news agency IRNA.

Israel launched the surprise air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.

Iran, which denies trying to build nuclear weapons, retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites and cities.

‘GREAT VICTORY’

Israel’s military lifted restrictions on activity across the country at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT), and officials said Ben Gurion Airport, the country’s main airport near Tel Aviv, had reopened. Iran’s airspace likewise will be reopened, state-affiliated Nournews reported.

A White House official said Trump brokered the ceasefire deal with Netanyahu, and other administration officials were in touch with the Iranian government.

Item 1 of 21 A satellite overview shows the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Facility, along with damage from recent airstrikes, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, near Qom, Iran, June 24, 2025. Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS [1/21] A satellite overview shows the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Facility, along with damage from recent airstrikes, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, near Qom, Iran, June 24, 2025. Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

The truce appeared fragile: Both Israel and Iran took hours to acknowledge they had accepted the ceasefire and accused each other of violating it.

Trump scolded both sides but aimed especially stinging criticism at Israel, telling the close U.S. ally to “calm down now.” He later said Israel called off further attacks at his command.

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said he told his U.S. counterpart, Pete Hegseth, that his country would respect the ceasefire unless Iran violated it. Pezeshkian likewise said Iran would honor the ceasefire as long as Israel did, according to Iranian media.

Whether the Israel-Iran truce can hold is a major question given the deep mistrust between the two foes. But Trump’s ability to broker a ceasefire showed Washington retains some leverage in the volatile region.

Israeli armed forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir said a “significant chapter” of the conflict had concluded but the campaign against Iran was not over. He said the military would refocus on its war against Iran-backed Hamas militants in Gaza.

Iran’s military command also warned Israel and the U.S. to learn from the “crushing blows” it delivered during the conflict.

Iranian authorities said 610 people were killed in their country by Israeli strikes and 4,746 injured. Iran’s retaliatory bombardment killed 28 people in Israel, the first time its air defenses were penetrated by large numbers of Iranian missiles.

Oil prices plunged and stock markets rallied worldwide in a sign of confidence inspired by the ceasefire, which allayed fears of disruption to critical oil supplies from the Gulf.

CEASEFIRE VIOLATIONS?

Earlier in the day, Trump admonished Israel with an obscenity in an extraordinary outburst at an ally whose air war he had joined two days before by dropping massive bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

Before departing the White House en route to a NATO summit in Europe, Trump told reporters he was unhappy with both sides for the ceasefire breach but particularly frustrated with Israel, which he said had “unloaded” shortly after agreeing to the deal.

“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down now,” Trump said. Iran and Israel had been fighting “so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Netanyahu’s office acknowledged Israel bombed a radar site near Tehran in what it said was retaliation for Iranian missiles fired three-and-a-half hours after the ceasefire was due to begin.

It did not explicitly say whether the strike on the radar site took place before or after they spoke.

The Islamic Republic denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour-and-a-half beyond the time the truce was meant to start.

“Who mediated or how it happened doesn’t matter,” said Reza Sharifi, 38, heading back to Tehran from Rasht on the Caspian Sea, where he had fled with his family. “The war is over. It never should have started in the first place.”

Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay and Reuters bureaus; writing by Andy Sullivan, Mark Heinrich, Peter Graff and Jonathan Allen; editing by Timothy Heritage, Ross Colvin, Joe Bavier, Cynthia Osterman and Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Share X

Facebook

Linkedin

Email

Link Purchase Licensing Rights

Iran has today admitted its nuclear facilities were ‘badly damaged’ by US bombs after Donald Trump insisted they were ‘obliterated’ and lashed out at ‘fake’ news coverage suggesting he failed to deliver a knock-out blow.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei conceded there had been significant impact caused by American bunker-busting bombs at the country’s three main nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.

It comes after Trump insisted the nuclear facilities were ‘obliterated’ and compared his airstrikes to the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.

Meanwhile NATO chief Mark Rutte suggested Donald Trump dealt with Israel and Iran’s war in the Middle East like a ‘daddy’ who uses ‘strong language’ to stop two children fighting in a schoolyard.

Rutte has put on a deferential and even fawning display with the US president, calling his intervention in the conflict ‘decisive’ and labelling him a ‘man of strength but also a man of peace’.

Trump yesterday shared private messages from Rutte which also showed him gushing over the ‘extraordinary’ US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which the US leader said ‘obliterated’ the sites.

Live updates below

A satellite view shows an overview of Fordow underground complex, after the U.S. struck the underground nuclear facility, near Qom, Iran June 22, 2025.

U.S. missile strikes did not completely destroy Iran’s key nuclear sites, an initial American assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found, according to three people familiar with the report who spoke to NBC News.

“We were assuming that the damage was going to be much more significant than this assessment is finding,” one of the three sources told NBC News. “This assessment is already finding that these core pieces are still intact. That’s a bad sign for the overall program.”

The assessment also found that the U.S. strikes set Iran’s nuclear program back by around three to six months. But Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed and Tehran’s centrifuges remain largely intact.

CNN first reported the existence of the report.

The assessment was based on U.S. Central Command’s analysis of battle damage from the bombings of three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. That analysis is ongoing.

The New York Times reported that the preliminary, classified report found the bombings did not collapse underground buildings of the Iranian nuclear sites.

The intelligence findings appear to contradict both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have asserted that the strikes completely “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear sites.

Asked for comment by CNBC, the Pentagon shared a statement from Hegseth that, “Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.”

“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target — and worked perfectly,” Hegseth said in the statement. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday, “The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NBC News in a statement that the “alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” Leavitt said.

She added: “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

— Kevin Breuninger

Iran’s foreign minister said his country will stop attacks on Israel if it ceased its “illegal aggression” as Donald Trump claimed the two sides had agreed a ceasefire.

The US president said on Monday night that the truce had averted the destruction of the Middle East, hours after Iran targeted a US airbase in Qatar in a missile attack (pictured above) that was revenge for American strikes on its nuclear enrichment sites.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s top diplomat, denied that Tehran has agreed to a ceasefire but said his country had “no intention to continue our response” after 5am (UK) when Mr Trump said the truce would come into force.

As that deadline approached, air raid sirens continued to sound in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as the IDF said Iran has fired multiple waves of missiles.

JD Vance warned on Monday night that the US will launch more military strikes on Iran if it attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

The US vice-president said American airstrikes over the weekend had “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear programme and urged it to “pursue the path of peace”.

Mr Vance told Fox News: “If Iran is desperate to build a nuclear weapon in the future, then they’re going to have to deal with a very, very powerful American military again.

“Our hope is that the lesson that the Iranians have learned here is: look, we can fly a bunker-buster bomb from Missouri to Iran completely undetected without landing once on the ground, and we can destroy whatever nuclear capacity you build up.”