Washington, 30 June

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told skeptical US lawmakers that American military strikes destroyed Iran's lone metal conversion facility and in the process delivered a monumental setback to Tehran's nuclear programme that would take years to overcome, a US official said on Sunday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence, said Ratcliffe laid out the importance of the strikes on the metal conversion facility during a classified hearing for US lawmakers last week.

Details about the private briefings surfaced as President Donald Trump and his administration keep pushing back on questions from Democratic lawmakers and others about how far Iran was set back by the strikes before last Tuesday's ceasefire with Israel took hold.

“It was obliterating like nobody's ever seen before,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures".

"And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time.”

Ratcliffe also told lawmakers that the intelligence community assessed the vast majority of Iran's amassed enriched uranium likely remains buried under the rubble at Isfahan and Fordo, two of the three key nuclear facilities targeted by US strikes.

But even if the uranium remains intact, the loss of its metal conversion facility effectively has taken away Tehran's ability to build a bomb for years to come, the official said.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Sunday on CBS' “Face the Nation” that the three Iranian sites with “capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree".

But, he added, “some is still standing” and that because capabilities remain, “if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again".

He said assessing the full damage comes down to Iran allowing in inspectors.

"Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared, and there is nothing there," Grossi said.

Trump has insisted from just hours after three key targets were struck by US bunker-buster bombs and Tomahawk missiles that Iran's nuclear program was “obliterated.”

His defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said they were “destroyed".

A preliminary report issued by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, meanwhile, said the strikes did significant damage to the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan sites, but did not totally destroy the facilities.

As a result of Israeli and US strikes, Grossi said that “it is clear that there has been severe damage, but it's not total damage". Israel claims it has set back Iran's nuclear program by “many years".