The latest updates in the Israel-Iran war include:
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Politico's Dasha Burns on Wednesday that Iran is "much further away from a nuclear weapon" amid new intelligence assessments that a U.S. strike did not destroy three of the country's nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. A preliminary intelligence report by the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the strikes on Tehran's nuclear program set it back by only a few months, CNN reported.
- President Donald Trump compared the U.S strikes against Iran to the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan during World War II. "I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war. If we didn't take that out, they would have been – they'd be fighting right now," Trump said, The New York Times reported.
- Israel Defense Forces Chief Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin on Wednesday insisted Iran's nuclear program "has been set back years," The Jerusalem Post reported.
- Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Iranian parliament's move to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency is concerning, but attributed it to Israel's "unprovoked attack" on Iran's nuclear facilities, Al Jazeera reported. In comments carried by Russia's state-owned RIA Novosti news agency, Peskov claimed the IAEA's reputation has suffered serious damage from those attacks.
- Iranian authorities announce the gradual easing of internet restrictions imposed during the 12-day war with Israel, following the implementation of a ceasefire, Times of Israel reported. "The communication network is gradually returning to its previous state," the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' cybersecurity command said in a statement carried by state media.
- Six Ben-Gurion University research laboratories were destroyed and nine others were damaged by the impact of an Iranian missile that struck the Soroka University Medical Center campus on June 19, the educational institution said. The damage to the six destroyed laboratories "wiped out years of work on diverse research projects in medicine and biology," the university said, The Times of Israel reported.