Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently defended the Trump administration’s airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
During an interview with Politico’s Dasha Burns, Rubio contradicted reports that the airstrikes were ineffective when it comes to crippling Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons. Of particular interest were reports from CNN and The New York Times suggesting that the military action only pushed Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months.
Rubio began by expressing frustration that someone in the Trump administration leaked information to the news outlets. “What typically happens is someone reads a report and leaks it with their own spin, often to embarrass the administration or oppose the action,” he said. “The Iranian program, the nuclear program today, looks nothing like it did just a week ago.”
He further insisted that Iran is “much further from a nuclear weapon today than before the president took this bold action.”
The state secretary further emphasized that the operations inflicted “significant, very significant, substantial damage” to the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions. Rubio told Burns that the military’s strikes used precision-guided penetrator bombs to reach facilities that were built deep underground.
NEW VIDEO: Trump says airstrikes on Iran were an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they're not being given credit for it because we have “scum” in the media
— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) June 25, 2025
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Rubio addressed Americans who are wary of getting the US involved in foreign military entanglements. Burns asked what he would say to these individuals.
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“Some of the evidence is open-source. For example, Maxar images show the Esfahan conversion site is completely wiped out,” Rubio pointed out. “You could rebuild it, but right now, it’s unusable. At Natanz, the Israelis caused heavy damage, and we followed up with more deep-penetrating munitions. At Fordow, which is deep under a mountain, we believe very significant lasting damage was done. We dropped 12 munitions—it wasn’t a test.”
Rubio stressed that President Trump “wanted a one-off campaign targeting three nuclear sites—hit them hard, avoid loss of life, and move on” and that “the mission was achieved.”
“In fact, by Monday night, we had a ceasefire,” he added.
The state secretary affirmed that the president “doesn’t want a war with Iran” and said regime change is “not on the table for the US.”
The reports in question involved a preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency indicating that the US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and military sites caused immense damage. However, they only delayed the regime’s nuclear program by a few months. They indicated that much of the country’s uranium had been relocated before the airstrikes. Officials noted that Iran might still possess covert enrichment sites that “were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped.”
The Trump administration has rejected these claims. The president assured the public that the airstrikes had “obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.”
In a Wednesday post on Truth Social, Trump lashed out at CNN and The New York Times, saying “They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so.”
“These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE. You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to always make our Country look bad. TOTAL OBLITERATION!” the president added.
You can watch Marco Rubio’s interview below.
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