Rubio on Trump Iran strikes: 'Very significant, substantial damage was done’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said U.S. strikes on Iran impaired future nuclear operations as reports that the weekend attack didn’t completely destroy its three nuclear facilities have surfaced.

“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 told Politico.

“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,” he added.

Earlier this week, the Defense Intelligence Agency found that Iran’s centrifuges were largely “intact” and strikes from U.S. B2 bombers over the weekend only set nuclear developments back by a few months, as first reported by CNN.

The report also said Iran moved much of its enriched uranium before the strikes, according to multiple outlets. Uranium is enriched to create nuclear bombs. 

But Rubio on Wednesday said CNN’s reporting was inaccurate while the White House maintained that it would rely on the Israeli site assessment.

“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,” the Rubio told Politico.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed his denial on Wednesday.

“Of course we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments,” Hegseth told reporters at the NATO summit in the Netherlands. “And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”

The contents of the report directly contradict President Trump’s claims that Iran's nuclear development sites were “inoperable” due to U.S. strikes.

“They’re bad people. They’re sick,” Trump said about outlets reporting on the discrepancy. “And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

Rubio told Politico that chances of the Middle Eastern country accumulating a stockpile of nuclear weapons was out of the picture.

“Our national security issue with Iran is with a clerical regime that wants nuclear weapons so they can threaten us, threaten Israel today, threaten us tomorrow. And the president’s made clear that’s not going to happen,” Rubio said. 

In the Wednesday interview, he added that Trump's national security team would continue to crack down on Iran and other countries the president deems a threat.

“There’s only one vote here,” Rubio said, noting that Trump listens to various advisers, but “once the president makes a decision, his instincts are uncanny, and we have to appreciate that.”

“When he says, ‘This is the direction I want to go,’ our job is not to spend all day trying to change his mind.”