WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday held firm on his stance that U.S. strikes over the weekend “obliterated” an Iranian nuclear site in the wake of a leaked report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency indicating less damage.
The president also said that he does not believe Iran was able to move nuclear materials prior to the attacks to save it and asserted Tehran is done engaging in nuclear activities.
Addressing reporters at a press conference to conclude a whirlwind about 24-hour trip to the Netherlands for this year’s NATO summit, Trump pushed back against a U.S. intelligence assessment reported by several outlets that found U.S. and Israeli attacks only set Iran’s nuclear program back a few months.
While Trump conceded that an early U.S. intelligence document said the damage done to Iran’s nuclear facility assessed it “could be limited or it could be very severe,” he said “additional intelligence” collected since then and conversations with people who have seen the site first-hand point to it being obliterated. He said Iran would not have agreed to the ceasefire with Israel should that not have been the case.
The president and the White House have also pointed to a statement from Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei to Al Jazeera in which he conceded the country’s nuclear installations have been “badly damaged” as well as an assessment from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. That statement says the U.S. strike on Iran’s Fordo nuclear site “rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”
In his opening statement at the press conference, Trump declared the U.S. strikes set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons “for many years to come” – a timeline he framed as “basically decades” earlier in the day – but maintained Tehran would not be “getting back involved in the nuclear business” anyway.
“I think they’ve had it, they’ve been at it for 20 years,” he said.
Although the president added that if they do, the U.S. is “always there”
“It won’t be me, it’ll be somebody else, but we’re there, we’ll have to do something about it,” he added, seemingly referring to a different U.S. commander in chief being in power.
Trump said he does not believe Iran was able to move any nuclear material in anticipation of attacks against its sites, noting it is “very hard and very dangerous to move” and was deep underground.
“We think we hit him so hard and so fast, they didn’t get to move,” he said.
Overall, the president declared the conflict between Israel and Iran over after a stunning 24 hours that saw a ceasefire announced by Trump followed by what looked like the agreement on the brink of collapse before appearing to hold on. Trump said he was confident in such a declaration because both sides were “satisfied to go home and get out.”
The “telltale sign,” he said, was when Iran “somewhat” violated the ceasefire and Israel listened to the president’s public and fierce urging to turn planes around and hold off on an attack in response.
“It was very good, I thought it was amazing actually,” he said.
Asked about conversations with the Iranians going forward, Trump said his administration would be speaking to Tehran next week. He said the U.S. will “probably” ask for a statement committing that Iran will not seek a nuclear weapon, potentially similar to what his administration was seeking from Tehran during weeks of talks before the strikes. But he repeatedly said he did not care if an agreement was reached and that it wasn’t “necessary.”
“I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said. “The only thing we would be asking for is what we were asking for before, about we want no nuclear, but we destroyed the nuclear.”
The president’s insistence at Wednesday’s press conference that Iran’s sites were obliterated came after he added the caveat of “virtual” ahead of the term earlier in the day.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that “any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives” and said an investigation into who leaked the U.S. intelligence report was underway.
Some Democrats have questioned the Trump administration’s characterization that the sites were obliterated and demanded more information. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said this week “there have been no facts that have been presented to the American people or to the Congress to confirm that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated.”