Iran publicly admitted for the first time Wednesday that its nuclear sites were “badly damaged” by the American bunker-busting bombs.
Tehran’s Foreign Ministry did not elaborate on the full extent of the damage — but President Trump cited fresh intelligence that indicated Iran’s facilities appeared to have been “completely and totally obliterated,” setting Iran’s nuclear arms efforts back “basically decades.”
“Israel is doing a report on it now, I understand, and I was told that they said it was total obliteration,” Trump said during the NATO summit Wednesday.
“You know they have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration,” he went on. “I believe it was total obliteration.”
Trump had ordered strikes on Iran’s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear sites over the weekend, using 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs to destroy areas that Israel’s missiles could not get to.
He trashed a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report that claimed — with low confidence — that the attack did not destroy key components of Iran’s nuclear program and may have only set it back by months.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also called the report “flat-out wrong.”
It “was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” she said, as the White House vowed to investigate how it was made public.
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) agreed with the US assessment that the attacks achieved their goals.
“The devastating US strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable,” the IAEC said in a statement.
“We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” it added. “This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.”
Trump also pushed back against suggestions that Iran may have moved some of its highly enriched uranium before the strikes.
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“They didn’t have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast. If it would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it’s very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous for them to remove it,” Trump remarked.
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“Plus they knew we were coming, and if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”
On Monday, Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. Israel later attacked Iran and Iran responded in kind, prompting Trump to lash out at both countries Tuesday, venting that “they don’t know what the f—k they’re doing.”
But since then, the cease-fire appears to have held.
With Post wires
