Iran calls NATO chief remarks on US strikes ‘disgraceful’

TEHRAN: Iran on Wednesday branded NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s gushing note to President Donald Trump on US strikes targeting key nuclear sites as “disgraceful, despicable and irresponsible”.

On Tuesday, Rutte hailed in a pre-NATO summit note to Trump what he called his “decisive action” in Iran, days after the United States conducted unprecedented strikes on its nuclear facilities.

Rutte said the move “was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do. It makes us safer”.

Also on Wednesday, the Iranian parliament approved a bill to suspend cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, after the US and Israeli strikes on its nuclear installations.

CRIMINAL ACT OF AGGRESSION

However, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei hit back in response to Rutte. He said it was “disgraceful, despicable and irresponsible” for the NATO secretary general to congratulate a “truly extraordinary criminal act of aggression” against a sovereign state.

Who “supports a crime is regarded as complicit,” Baqaei said in a post on X.

Earlier, the US strikes on Sunday hit key sites of Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz, and came 10 days after Israel launched a major bombardment campaign on Iran.

Meanwhile, Israel’s attack on June 13 targeted Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders and nuclear scientists.

However, Iran retaliated with waves of missiles strikes before a ceasefire took hold on Tuesday.

Trump said the US strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and on Wednesday he insisted the strikes set the country’s atomic programme back “decades”.

Amid all the chaos, leaked US intelligence cast doubt on the damage caused by American strikes, saying they had set back Tehran’s nuclear programme by just a few months.

Iranian officials have yet to disclose the exact scale of the damage resulting from  the US and Israel strikes on the sites.

However, Baqaei in an interview with Al Jazeera said they had been “badly damaged”.