Washington: Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Sunday that America “does not seek war” with Iran in the aftermath of a surprise attack overnight on three of that country’s nuclear sites while Vice President JD Vance said the strikes have given Tehran a renewed chance of negotiating with Washington.
The mission, called “Operation Midnight Hammer,” involved decoys and deception, and met with no Iranian resistance, Hegseth and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Hegseth added.
Caine said the goal of the operation — destroying nuclear sites in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — had been achieved.
“Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Caine said.
Vance said in a television interview that while he would not discuss “sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground,” he felt “very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon.”
Pressed further, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time. I think that it’s going to be many many years before the Iranians are able to develop a nuclear weapon.”
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The vice president said the US had “negotiated aggressively’ with Iran to try to find a peaceful settlement and that Trump made his decision after assessing the Iranians were not acting “in good faith.”
“I actually think it provides an opportunity to reset this relationship, reset these negotiations and get us in a place where Iran can decide not to be a threat to its neighbours, not to a threat to the United States and if they’re willing to do that, the United States is all ears,” Vance said.
He added: “The Iranians can go down the path of peace or they can go down the path of this ridiculous brinkmanship of funding terrorism, of trying to build a nuclear weapon and that’s just not something the United States can accept.”
Much of the world is absorbing the consequences of the strikes and the risk that they could lead to more fighting across the Middle East after the United States inserted itself into the war between Israel and Iran. Airstrikes starting June 12 by Israel that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities and generals prompted retaliation from Iran.
While US officials urged for caution and stressed that only nuclear sites were targeted by Washington, Iran criticised the actions as a violation of its sovereignty and international law.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that Washington was “fully responsible” for whatever actions Tehran may take in response.
“They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities,” he said at a news conference in Turkiye. “I don’t know how much room is left for diplomacy.”
Both Russia and China condemned the US attack. Araghchi said he would travel to Moscow later Sunday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement warned about the risk of the conflict spreading beyond the Middle East to “a global level.”
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The Pentagon briefing did not provide any new details about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Hegseth said the timeline was the result of a schedule set by President Donald Trump for talks with Iran about its nuclear ambitions.
“Iran found out” that when Trump “says 60 days that he seeks peace and negotiation, he means 60 days of peace and negotiation,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, that nuclear programme, that new nuclear capability will not exist. He meant it.”
That statement was complicated as the White House had suggested last Thursday that Trump could take as much as two weeks to determine whether to strike Iran or continue to pursue negotiations. But the US benefited from Iran’s weakened air defences as it was able to conduct the attacks without resistance from Iran.
“Iran’s fighters did not fly, and it appears that Iran’s surface to air missile systems did not see us throughout the mission,” Caine said.
Hegseth said that a choice to move a number of B-2 bombers from their base in Missouri earlier Saturday was meant to be a decoy to throw off Iranians. He added that the US used other methods of deception as well, deploying fighters to protect the B-2 bombers that dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs on Iran’s site at Fordo.
The strikes occurred Saturday between 6:40 pm and 7:05 pm in Washington, or roughly 2:10 am on Sunday in Iran.
AP
