President Donald Trump insists the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities but insisted the bombing strike obliterated Tehran’s nuclear programme, setting it back decades.
Speaking at the Nato summit, Trump compared the US operation to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Those attacks on Japan killed an estimated 150,00 to 246,000 people, mostly civilians.
“That hit ended the war. I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing, that ended that war. This ended that with the war,” he said.
A leaked preliminary intelligence assessment is said to have found that the US military strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend did not destroy the country’s nuclear programme.
Trump admitted the early intelligence was “very inconclusive” before doubling down on his claims the attack destroyed the nuclear sites.
“We hear it was obliteration. It was a virtual obliteration,” he said, while defence secretary Pete Hegseth said it was a “flawless mission”.
Earlier, Trump claimed he “stopped the war” as a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran appeared to hold. “It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!” he said.
Nuclear facilities are ‘badly damaged’
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed the country’s nuclear facilities hit by US bunker buster bombs on the weekend have been “badly damaged”.
Asked by Al Jazeera whether the sites had been damaged, Mr Baghaei said: “Yes, our nuclear installations have been badly damaged”.
“That’s for sure because [they have] come under repeated attacks,” he told the news outlet.
Mr Baghaei added the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, was looking into it.
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog says there is a chance that much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium survived Israeli and US attacks because it may have been moved by Tehran soon after the first strikes.
Israel repeatedly struck Iranian nuclear facilities during its 12-day war with Tehran, and US forces struck Iran’s underground nuclear facilities with bunker buster bombs on the weekend.
So far the extent of the damage to Iran’s stocks of enriched uranium remains unclear.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said that earlier this week, Iran had informed the body that on the first day of the Israeli strikes it was taking “special measures” to protect its nuclear materials.
“They did not get into details as to what that meant but clearly that was the implicit meaning of that, so we can imagine that this material is there,” Grossi told a press conference on Wednesday with members of the Austrian government.
“So for that, to confirm, for the whole situation, evaluation, we [IAEA inspectors] need to return.”
