25-6-2025
US President Donald Trump has disagreed with intelligence report, which claimed that the three Iranian nuclear sites hit by US air strikes caused limited damage, which will take Iran a few months to fix.
The assessment made by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said the attack did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program, putting it at odds with Trump’s claim that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
But while speaking to reports at the Hague venue of the NATO alliance meeting Trump argued that “intelligence was very inconclusive,” and he believed the damage was “very severe.”
“There was total obliteration,” he said, adding the attacks set Iran’s nuclear program back “decades.”
“They’re not going to be building bombs for a long time.”
Some analysts have expressed doubt over claims by Trump and other US officials that the sites were destroyed.
Since the June 21 bombings by the United States, a lack of detailed information on the results have fueled speculation over how effective they were.
Satellite images showed gaping holes in areas at the site, but with the facility deep underground, damage wasn’t visible.
Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told a press conference on June 25 that “it is still early to assess the results of the operation.”
“I believe we have delivered a significant hit to the nuclear program, and I can also say that we have delayed it by several years,” he added.
Nuclear nonproliferation expert and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Robert Einhorn noted that more than 400 kilograms of Iran’s uranium stockpile enriched to 60 percent purity had been moved and had not been unaccounted for.
“Conceivably, if under Iran’s possession, [the stockpile] could be taken to some secret location and used in a nuclear weapons program,” Einhorn told RFE/RL.
Grossi said he received a letter from Tehran on June 13 saying “special measures” had been taken before the bombings to protect the uranium.
“They did not get into details as to what that meant but clearly that was the implicit meaning of that. We can imagine this material is there,” Grossi said, suggesting much of that material had survived the attacks.