Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “blown up to kingdom come,” U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday.
“We destroyed the nuclear. In other words, that’s destroyed. I said Iran will not have nuclear. We blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come,” Trump said, speaking at the NATO summit at The Hague in the Netherlands.
He added, “It was very, very successful. It was called obliteration. No other military on earth could have done it. And now this incredible exercise of American strength has paved the way for peace with a historic ceasefire agreement late Monday. And we call it the 12 Day War.”
Trump’s comments come after U.S. media, including The Associated Press, reported on a U.S. intelligence report that suggested Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes.
It was not “completely and fully obliterated” as Trump has previously said, according to multiple people familiar with the early assessment quoted by The Associated Press, Reuters and other major U.S. news outlets.
Trump pushed back on those apparent findings when questioned by reporters Wednesday.
“If you take a look at the pictures, if you take a look how it’s all blackened, the fire and brimstone is all underground because it’s granite and it’s all underground. You don’t show it. But even there, with all of that being said, the whole area for 75 yards around the hole where it (U.S. missiles) hit is black with fire,” Trump said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed the report as “preliminary” and “low confidence.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added, “These leakers are professional stabbers.”
“Low confidence” typically refers to intelligence that’s considered poorly sourced or incomplete.
Later on Wednesday, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated: “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do.”
Gabbard’s office declined to respond to questions about the details of the new intelligence, or whether it would be declassified and released publicly.
Additionally, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement Wednesday that “a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.”
“This includes new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,” the statement said.
Ratcliffe added in a post on X that the new CIA intelligence “contradicts illegally sourced public reporting.”
The report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday, as quoted by people familiar, contradicted statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to the American media outlets.
Trump added that the U.S. will be speaking with the Iranian side soon.
“We’re going to talk to them next week with Iran. We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” he said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”
Rubio added, “That’ll depend on Iran’s willingness not just to engage in peace, but to negotiate directly with the United States, not through some third country or fourth country.”
Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there have been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran.
Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going “very well,” and added that Iran was “not going to have a bomb, and they’re not going to enrich.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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