Iran has fiercely criticised NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte over his praise of recent US military strikes on its nuclear facilities, labelling his comments “disgraceful, despicable, and irresponsible.”
In a statement on Wednesday, June 25, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei reacted strongly to remarks made by Rutte in a message to US President Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming NATO summit.
In the note, Rutte commended Trump’s decision to authorise the attacks, describing it as “decisive action” and calling it “truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do.”
“It makes us safer,” Rutte added.
Baqaei took to social media to condemn the statement, saying it was reprehensible for the NATO chief to applaud what he described as a “criminal act of aggression” against a sovereign nation. “Whoever supports a crime is regarded as complicit,” he wrote on X.
The US airstrikes, which took place on Sunday, targeted Iran’s nuclear sites in Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz. The attacks followed an earlier unprovoked Israeli attack on June 13, which reportedly destroyed nuclear facilities and killed several senior military officials and scientists. Iran retaliated with multiple missile strikes before a ceasefire was reached on Tuesday.
Trump has claimed the US air raids “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme and insisted on Wednesday that the operations had set the country’s atomic development back by “decades.” However, leaked US intelligence assessments suggest the impact was far more limited, estimating only a few months’ delay.
While Iran has yet to fully disclose the extent of the damage, Baqaei told Al Jazeera English in an interview that the affected sites were “badly damaged.”
