US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities “effectively fulfilled our narrow objective: to degrade Iran’s capacity to produce a nuclear weapon,” acting US envoy to the UN Dorothy Shea tells the United Nations Security Council.
“These strikes – in accordance with the inherent right to collective self-defense, consistent with the UN Charter – aimed to mitigate the threat posed by Iran to Israel, the region and to, more broadly, international peace and security,” Shea tells the 15-member council.
US President Donald Trump has said the strikes over the weekend “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities. Earlier today, he announced that a ceasefire between Iran and Israel had started.
“I think it’s still early to assess all the strikes. We know we were able to push back the [nuclear] program. We were able to remove the imminent threat that we had,” Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon tells reporters.
The UN Security Council met to discuss the implementation of a resolution adopted in 2015 to enshrine Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, which lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Trump quit the deal in 2018, during his first term, and restored all US sanctions on Tehran. In response, Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the accord.
UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo tells the Security Council that the objectives of the Iran nuclear deal and the UN resolution “have yet to be fully realized,” adding: “This is regrettable.”
Israeli intelligence assesses that US and Israeli strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program by “several years,” but did not completely destroy it, as US President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, a senior Israeli official tells The Times of Israel.
The Israeli intelligence assessment is constantly being updated and refined, and a more concrete understanding of the status of Iran’s nuclear program will be available in the coming weeks, the senior Israeli official says.
The Israeli official argues that the military strikes were still worthwhile because the negotiations that the US had previously been pursuing with Iran would not have been able to achieve such results.
Doing some Iranian Monday morning quarterbacking one day hence. Buildings demolished and stones knocked down but no knockout. Uranium stockpile intact, ceasefire broken with missiles still flying into Israel killing people and Iranian oil sanctions lifted. Iran played the Ace of Trump - threat to choke off Hormuz (the jugular of the west) and POTUS blinked.
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