Donald Trump on Wednesday cited an Israeli government assessment to support his earlier remark that US strikes totally obliterated the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, dismissing a conflicting assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Early DIA intelligence assessments suggested the US attacks may have only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, falling short of the administration’s claims of long-term disruption.
President Trump and senior administration officials have rejected that conclusion.
"It is a manmade statement and if you read the document, the document said it could be severely damaged, but they did not take that. They said it could be limited or it could be very severe. You did not choose to put that, because it was soon after," Trump told reporters at a NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday.
"Since then, we collected additional and we talked to the people who have seen the site, and the site is obliterated, and we think everything nuclear is down there."
Trump said Israel sent agents to Iran’s bombed nuclear sites to confirm their “total obliteration”.
“Israel is doing a report on it now, I understand, and I was told that they said it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters.
“Iran’s nuclear program had been set back basically decades… It’s gone for years.”
The White House on Wednesday sent to reporters a statement by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) that said American strikes on Fordow "destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable."
The move raised eyebrows as the Israeli government had not yet released the statement. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, on behalf of the IAEC, officially published the assessment an hour later.
"We assess that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years," the statement read.
"The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material."
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt also denied the classified intelligence assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
"The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program," she said in a post on X.
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, told Fox News on Tuesday that the agency has not yet been able to fully assess the impact of the strikes due to lack of access.
He said Natanz was the first to be hit and sustained “very serious damage” in one of the centrifuge halls where enrichment was being carried out. He added that Isfahan also sustained damage but stressed that “nobody has been inside the halls to assess the damage.”
