US President Donald Trump has played down an intelligence report that stated that the US strikes in Iran did not destroy the nuclear facilities but set them back by a few months.
He argued that the damage was severe and drew parallels with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“It was very severe. It was obliteration,” he said as he shrugged off the initial assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency.
On Tuesday several media outlets revealed that the US Defence Intelligence Agency had assessed that the strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear programme by just a few months, despite Trump and his administration saying it had been obliterated.
‘US Strikes Ended Israel-Iran War’
At a NATO summit on Wedesday, Trump called the intelligence report “very inconclusive” while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
“The intelligence says, ‘We don’t know, it could have been very severe.’ That’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration.”
While the Trump administration has not disputed that the DIA assessment exists, the US President described it as preliminary.
He also sharply criticised journalists for their reporting on the assessment suggesting that the reports were an attack against the pilots who flew the bombing mission over the weekend targeting Iran’s key nuclear sites.
Additionally, Trump said the US strikes were responsible for ending the war between Israel and Iran.
“When you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, that ended a war, too,” Trump said, referring to a pair of U.S. nuclear strikes on Japan in 1945 that essentially ended World War II. “This ended a war in a different way.”
US-Iran Nuclear Talks
After 12 days of fighting put off the nuclear talks between the US and Iran, Trump said on Wednesday that the two countries would again come to the table to resume dialogue.
He said he would likely seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions during the talks.
“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary,” Trump said while speaking in the Hague during the NATO summit.
“I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” he said, referring to Western accusations that Iran has been enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade purity.
