Indications from an early intelligence assessment on the impact of the strikes began to emerge.
Indications from an early intelligence assessment on the impact of the strikes began to emerge.
President Donald Trump again claimed “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program during the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, dismissing a Pentagon report suggesting the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran’s facilities may have only set the program back by several months.
“I believe it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Trump was responding to assessments made in a preliminary analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Central Command. Two people familiar with the report told ABC News it suggested the strikes did limited damage and that Iran was able to relocate highly enriched uranium stocks before the strikes occurred.
“I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out, because we acted fast,” Trump said. “If it would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it’s very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous. Plus, they knew we were coming, and if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”
Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “basically decades,” adding, “It’s gone for years.”
Asked if they could rebuild and whether the U.S. would strike again, Trump said that would be someone else’s problem.
“I’m not going to have to worry about that,” he said. “It’s gone for years, years, very tough to rebuild, because the whole thing is collapsed. In other words, inside, it’s all collapsed. Nobody can get in to see it, because it’s collapsed.”
Asked if he trusted the U.S. intelligence assessment, the president said the initial report was “very inconclusive. 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.”
-ABC News’ Mary Bruce and Joe Simonetti
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