AMNA NAWAZ: Republican Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota sits on both the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees.

He and other senators were briefed a short time ago by CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Senator Rounds, welcome back to the "News Hour."

Thanks for being with us.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity to visit with you.

AMNA NAWAZ: I just want to play for you the takeaway that your Democratic colleague Senator Chris Murphy had after that briefing you were at as well and then get your reaction.

Here's what Senator Murphy had to say.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): I just do not think the president was selling the truth when he said this program was obliterated.

There was certainly damage done to the program, but there is the significant -- there's still significant remaining capability.

AMNA NAWAZ: Senator Rounds, do you believe that that is true, there's still significant remaining capability?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS: It's not the way that I would phrase it.

I think you would have to break it down into the different components that make up the threat.

I do think that the threat has been very seriously eliminated.

I think the vast majority of it has been, as I would say, targeted and correctly hit.

The guys that did the mission did it exactly as they were supposed to.

And I think what they wanted to accomplish with their mission, they did accomplish.

But I think the question in the hard part for us is sharing with the American people what that means in terms of what we needed to get done.

And I think Mr. Albright did a really good job of explaining just exactly what we did with the attacks that we had.

There's still uranium there.

There's no question about that, but that wasn't our target.

What we wanted to do was to hit the bottleneck that would allow them -- or the areas there in which it would allow them to continue to expedite the creation of a nuclear weapon.

We did stop that in its tracks.

We're certain of that.

The question then is, can they rebuild?

Can they start over?

Can they find ways to pick up the pieces?

And the answer to that is, depending upon their political will and whether or not they want to put their people through this again, sure they could.

But now it's kind of up to them as to whether or not they want to have a peaceful resolution to this, or do they want to see the same thing happen perhaps years from now?

AMNA NAWAZ: So, Senator, if you agree with the assessment we just heard from David Albright that there could very well be enriched uranium stockpiles either having been moved from a facility or being recovered from underneath the rubble, does that say to you that there still exists a capability for Iran's nuclear program?

The idea that it's completely destroyed is not necessarily true; is that right?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS: No, I wouldn't go that far.

What I thought he had said was that there is enriched uranium, which we all agree was there.

They had it up to a point which it could be easily turned into nuclear-grade or weapons-grade uranium that would be used for a bomb.

But they weren't there yet.

They had not pulled that trigger, but they could do so in a very short period of time.

What we do know is that they had talked about moving some of it, but there is no evidence that they did move any of it.

And so, as near as we can tell, enriched uranium, which was there to begin with in certain locations, would still be there, but it would be very inaccessible.

But the more important part is, the capability to actually turn it into weapons-grade has been significantly eroded.

It would take a long time for them to rebuild the parts and pieces to actually take that enriched uranium now and turn it into bomb-grade uranium.

And I think that's the part that -- if there was any misunderstanding on any parts of it, I think that would be where it would be at.

AMNA NAWAZ: You heard our reporting there about Secretary of Defense Hegseth talking about that initial assessment from the DIA that basically said the program had only been set back a few months, not destroyed.

And we saw after that report was leaked the White House said it's now going to limit intelligence sharing with Congress.

What's your reaction to that?

Do you have concerns about that?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS: Two parts.

Let me answer the second part first.

We have now talked with folks from the CIA and other entities that have three-letter alphabet names.

We have no evidence that there has been any movement on the part of any organization nor has any part of any one of these organizations been told to limit that information.

So, while there may have been public discussions about that, there has been no movement to do so.

And those entities would be responsible... AMNA NAWAZ: So, you don't believe the White House when they said they would limit that sharing; is that right?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS: What I'm saying is, is, regardless of what they said, there is no evidence that it has occurred.

And those entities who would be responsible for limiting it have a responsibility to come and advise us if such a direction were to be requested of them.

There is no evidence -- as of today, there's no evidence of that occurring.

But the other piece on this - - and let me go back to this.

I saw those preliminary reports.

I have the opportunity to go into a classified session, and I get those reports.

I saw the report that I believe was the one that was leaked.

And I can tell you that it was part of other reports as well.

And just as you read all of those reports, each of them will give you an assessment and the probability of whether or not they are correct.

The probability in this same report indicated that they had a very low probability of confidence in what they were saying, because they were so early in the process or discussion of actually getting the assessments completed.

But the other part of that, which we can talk about now, which was how -- and this is just an absolute recommendation or a commendation to the folks that actually executed this mission.

What they did in terms of planning over a period of time, executing flawlessly the delivery of multiple weapons into exactly the same spot, in a perfect timing position, was phenomenal and no other country in the world could do it.

They executed and their expectation is, is that the results were exactly what they hoped it would be.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, Senator Rounds, there's clearly a lot more to talk about this.

We hope you come back and join us again.

We thank you for your time tonight.

That is Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota joining us tonight.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS: Thank you.