WASHINGTON: Iran on Sunday threatened US bases in the Middle East after massive air strikes that Washington said had destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program, though some officials cautioned that the extent of damage was unclear.
International concern intensified that the unprecedented US attacks would deepen conflict in the Middle East after Israel launched a bombing campaign against Iran earlier this month.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said bases used by US forces could be attacked in retaliation.
“Any country in the region or elsewhere that is used by American forces to strike Iran will be considered a legitimate target for our armed forces,” he said in a message carried by the official IRNA news agency.
“America has attacked the heart of the Islamic world and must await irreparable consequences.”
President Donald Trump urged Iran to end the conflict after he launched surprise “bunker buster” strikes on a key underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, along with nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz.
“We had a spectacular military success yesterday, taking the ‘bomb’ right out of their hands (and they would use it if they could!)” he said on social media.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Pentagon press briefing that Iran’s nuclear program was “devastated,” adding that the operation “did not target Iranian troops or the Iranian people.”
Standing beside Hegseth, top US general Dan Caine said “it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”
“Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
As Iran’s leaders struck a defiant tone, President Masoud Pezeshkian also vowed that the United States would “receive a response” to the attacks.
People gathered Sunday in the center of Tehran to protest against US and Israeli attacks, waving flags and chanting slogans.
In an address to the nation hours after the attack, Trump had claimed total success for the operation, and Vice President JD Vance followed up on Sunday morning.
“We know that we set the Iranian nuclear program back substantially last night,” he told ABC.
But he also suggested Iran still had its highly enriched uranium.
“We’re going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel,” he said. “They no longer have the capacity to turn that stockpile of highly enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium.”
Another Khamenei advisor, Ali Shamkhani, said in a post on X that “even if nuclear sites are destroyed, game isn’t over, enriched materials, indigenous knowledge, political will remain.”
Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN there were clear signs of the hit on Fordo.
But no one knows “how much it has been damaged,” he said.
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