Sean Parnell Echoes Trump Claim That Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been 'Completely Obliterated'

At a Pentagon press briefing on Wednesday, Spokesperson Sean Parnell was asked about Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Transcript

00:00Tara. Thank you for doing this. You're welcome. How much did Iran's retaliatory

00:07strike against IUD kind of persuade the department to look at the stockpiles?

00:11Because it did take an enormous amount of patriots to defend that base against

00:16the ballistic missiles. And then secondly on Iran, again, have you had time now to

00:22do a deeper assessment of the damage to the nuclear facilities? And have there

00:28been any sort of like air patrols or anything like that to gather additional

00:32information? And so I'll answer your second question first. You know, our

00:37assessment of the battle damage around Fordow, Nantes and Estefan remains

00:41unchanged. I mean, we we believe and certainly all of the intelligence that

00:46we've seen have led us to believe that Iran's those facilities especially have

00:51been completely obliterated. And the interesting interesting kind of side

00:57point about this, Tara, is that all of the conversations that we've had since

01:01Operation Midnight Hammer with our allies all around the world, but certainly also

01:06in the region, you know, they say a couple of things. They share our sentiments

01:10about, you know, the degradation of Iran's nuclear program and the fact that

01:14we have degraded their program by one to two years, at least Intel assessments

01:18inside the department assess that. And I think their intelligence shares that

01:22conclusion by this department think it's been degraded or delayed by one to two

01:28years. I think we're thinking probably closer to two years, like degraded their

01:32their program by two years. But but but what we've seen almost, in fact, it's

01:37universally among our allies was them congratulating the United States, the

01:43president, the secretary of defense on that bold operation. And the idea that

01:48American action in Iran has set the conditions for global stability. You

01:54know, you think back during my time in Afghanistan, all of the when we were do

01:58sensitive site exploitations in Afghanistan, something like 20 years ago,

02:02almost all of the weapons that we pull out of those sensitive site

02:05exploitations were Iranian weapons. Iran has been a major exporter of terror all

02:10around the world and nations nations the world over have been subject to their

02:14terror. So I think they I think that nations all around the world have they

02:21know that when America is strong and speaks clearly, the world is a better and

02:25more stable place. And so I I think it pertains to your get to get your first

02:32question here now. I remind me what you what you asked again. How much did Iran's

02:38retaliatory strike on L.U.D. kind of press the department to look at the stockpiles?

02:43Well, we're always assessing our munitions and where we're sending them. And, you

02:48know, part of what we wanted to do here at the department was, again, create a

02:52framework. We can't give weapons to everybody all around the world. We have

02:55to look out for, you know, America and defending our homeland and our troops

03:00around the world. So, I mean, that's something that we always do, both before

03:06and after operations. And it's the president's job, along with the Secretary of

03:09Defense, to determine how we use those weapons.