A team of nuclear inspectors left Iran on Friday following the Islamic Republic’s implementation of a law suspending cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a statement posted on X.

In a separate post, the agency added: “Director General Rafael Grossi reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible.”

Tehran’s state-run Mehr news agency reported on Wednesday that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had ordered the implementation of June 25 legislation to halt inspections of Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar urged the international community to “utilize all means at its disposal” to confront the Iranian regime, accusing it of a “renunciation of all its international nuclear obligations and commitments.

“The time to activate the Snapback mechanism is now! I call upon the E3 countries—Germany, France and the U.K. to reinstate all sanctions against Iran!” Jerusalem’s top diplomat wrote on X.

On Thursday, Defense Minister Israel Katz praised the “remarkable successes” of the IDF’s “Operation Rising Lion,” calling the June 13-24 war a turning point in the effort to neutralize Iran’s nuclear and missile threats.

“In this operation, the IDF delivered extraordinary results,” he said. “We struck at Iran’s nuclear program and its missile manufacturing array. These were the core dangers to Israel’s security.”

Katz noted that Israeli forces also hit key regime assets in Tehran, including weapons depots and command posts. 

The military’s next mission is to create a detailed enforcement plan to ensure that Iran cannot reconstitute these capabilities, he said.

“The IDF must now prepare operationally and through intelligence to maintain air superiority over Tehran, and to prevent Iran from regaining its nuclear or missile capacities,” he added.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters on Wednesday that intelligence assessments continue to confirm the significant damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. “We have degraded their program by at least one to two years—intel assessments inside the [Defense] Department assess that. … I think we’re probably closer to two years,” Parnell said.

U.S. strikes on June 21–22 targeted key Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The mission involved seven B-2 bombers, more than 125 aircraft, Tomahawk cruise missiles and 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-buster bombs.

“Certainly, all the intelligence we’ve seen leads us to believe that Iran’s facilities, especially those, have been completely obliterated,” said Parnell.

He emphasized that the attack not only destroyed uranium enrichment equipment but also “the components they would need to build a bomb.”

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