How US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities changed the landscape of conflict
Image: Atta Kenare / AFP
The recent US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have sparked intense debate, with the focus shifting from the act of aggression itself to the scale of destruction inflicted on Iran's nuclear program.
US President Donald Trump initially claimed the damage was "monumental" and that the nuclear sites were "obliterated."
However, the Pentagon's own report suggests that the damage was less severe, setting back Iran's nuclear program by only three months.
The discrepancy between Trump's claims and the Pentagon's report has raised questions about the accuracy of the damage assessment.
While Trump claimed to be happy about the damage, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, reportedly said that the US strikes inflicted "extremely severe damage and destruction" on Iran's nuclear facilities, but the extent of the damage is still being assessed.
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The US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have deepened the conflict in the Middle East, and the international community is waiting to see how the situation unfolds.
Disagreement over the extent of the damage has raised questions about the effectiveness of the US strategy and the potential consequences for the region from experts.
International relations expert Bruce Spector noted that there are "a couple of things that must be focused on, including the disagreement over the extent of the damage".
"The Pentagon's intelligence agency's leaked report said the damage was rather less significant than a number of other organisations internationally had said," Spector said.
"What we need to concentrate on is what happens going forward. Will the Iranians finally start rebuilding a nuclear program? And if they do, is it headed toward the creation of a bomb or a nuclear device?"
Spector thinks the best way to evaluate the situation is to look at what happens next.
"If Iran's program has been decimated or obliterated, then there isn't much point cooperating because there isn't much of a program to cooperate over," he said.
"If that's a kind of a threat to allow the Iranians to begin to reconstitute their program, that's a whole different thing altogether."
Spector noted that there are 18 different organisations in the US that focus on different aspects of information gathering, and they have yet to offer their analysis.
"A lot of it will be second-hand intelligence…"It will be a while until we have a consensus on this,' Spector said.
Meanwhile North Korea has since 'strongly' condemned the US strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities as a grave violation of a sovereign state's security interests and territorial rights, the North's state media reported.
The US and Israel are the culprits of the current tensions in the Middle East born out of Jerusalem's "ceaseless war moves and territorial expansion" accepted and encouraged by the West," North Korea's foreign ministry said.
"North Korea strongly denounces the attack on Iran by the US which ... violently trampled down the territorial integrity and security interests of a sovereign state.
"The just international community should raise the voice of unanimous censure and rejection against the US and Israel's confrontational acts," the statement added.
mashudu.sadike@inl.co.za
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