Iran is now much further away from developing a nuclear weapon after the US carried out strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the [US] president [Donald Trump] took this bold action," Rubio told Politico on the sidelines of the NATO summit. "That’s the most important thing to understand—significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it.”

Earlier, US media, citing preliminary intelligence data, reported that the US had failed to destroy the main components of Tehran’s nuclear program and that the US strikes had only blocked access to two of Iran’s nuclear facilities.