Iran nuclear sites left ruined in US and Israeli strikes but program ‘intact,’ deputy foreign minister tells CNN

By Billy Stockwell, CNN

(CNN) — Iran’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh has described his country’s nuclear program as still “intact” despite admitting that US and Israeli strikes badly damaged facilities earlier this year.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen Sunday, Khatibzadeh said Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program is intact, as we are speaking,” adding that “we are going to be protecting that.”

The exact state of Iran’s facilities remains unclear following a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June and US airstrikes against three of the country’s nuclear facilities – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – also that month.

US President Donald Trump initially claimed that Fordow had been obliterated. An early US intelligence assessment suggested the three nuclear facilities had been badly damaged, but that Iran’s nuclear program may have only been set back by up to two years.

While Khatibzadeh said that Israeli and US strikes had “ruined many of our infrastructure, machineries” and “buildings,” he noted that the nuclear program was “very much based on our indigenous knowledge, very much spread across our country, which is a huge country – 90 million people.”

“And this country is not a country that you can bomb and then think that you are going to ruin everything,” the minister said.

Khatibzadeh’s assessment comes as Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that no uranium enrichment was taking place “right now” because the country’s enrichment facilities had been “attacked.” The enrichment process produces fuel for nuclear power plants, which, at higher-enrichment levels, can also be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Khatibzadeh did not comment on whether enrichment was taking place at Iran’s facilities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report Wednesday that checking Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium was “long overdue,” with its inspectors still not allowed into the bombed nuclear sites, Reuters has reported.

Khatibzadeh said Iran’s nuclear program was peaceful, repeating Tehran’s long-standing position that it exists solely for energy generation purposes.

He also suggested that any future dialogue with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program would be contingent on an agreement that Iran could pursue uranium enrichment. “Delusions of zero enrichment inside Iran or trying to deprive Iran from its basic rights is not going to be an option for Iran,” he said.

Separately, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “legitimate military programs to defend our national interests and our national security.” Asked by CNN if Tehran is expanding its missile program, the minister said the program was going through “repair and recovery” after a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Iran came into effect in June.

Last month, CNN reported on signs that Iran is stepping up the rebuilding of its ballistic missile program, despite the recent reintroduction of United Nations sanctions that ban arms sales to the country and ballistic missile activity.

European intelligence sources said Chinese firms were helping Iran rebuild its ballistic missile program, with several shipments of sodium perchlorate – a missile propellant precursor – being delivered from China to Iran since the end of September.

In his CNN interview, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “very close relations” with China, as well as Russia, which predate “anything that happened recently.”

Asked if he had a message to the Trump administration regarding its relationship with Iran, the deputy minister said his country is the “oldest living, continuous civilization on earth… This country and this nation is (a) master of survival.”

CNN’s Melissa Bell and Gianluca Mezzofiore contributed to this report. This story has been updated.

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