Iran ‘much Further Away’ From Building Nukes After Us Strike, Rubio Says

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Iran is “much further away from a nuclear weapon” amid new intelligence assessments that a U.S. strike did not destroy three of the country’s nuclear sites.

Rubio, in an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns on the sidelines of the NATO summit, offered a more measured assessment than President Donald Trump, who has insisted that Iran’s sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan have been “completely destroyed.”

“The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action,” Rubio said. “That's the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we're just learning more about it.”

A preliminary intelligence report by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the strikes on Tehran’s nuclear program set it back by only a few months, CNN reported.

The U.S. intelligence community will continue to produce assessments in the coming days and weeks, and different spy agencies within the government often do not agree with each other as they produce their analysis.

Rubio dismissed the media reports as “false” and said they did not capture the full picture.

“I hate commenting on these stories, because often the first story is wrong and the person putting it out there has an agenda,” he said. “That story is a false story, and it's one that really shouldn't be rereported because it doesn't accurately reflect what's happening.”

Dasha Burns' full interview with Secretary of State Marco will be posted on www.politico.com later today.