By Sean Rayment
US officials will hold talks with Iran on its nuclear programme next week amid conflicting reports over the damage it sustained during a bombing campaign.
The White House and the CIA have both pushed back against suggestions that the US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites did less damage than initially thought, based on claims from a leaked US intelligence report.
Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump insisted that the programme had been fully destroyed, despite doubts cast by the document.
“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran,” he said. “We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary.”
In his initial announcement of the US strikes on Iran’s three main nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan at the weekend, Trump said they had been “completely and fully obliterated”.
The assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, leaked to the media on Tuesday night, said the US attacks had been only partially successful and would allow Iran to rebuild a nuclear programme within months.
The White House immediately hit back, calling the assessment “flat-out wrong”. It also authorised the release of a more positive assessment by Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission. “The devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable,” it said. “We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear programme, have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”
John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, released a statement on Wednesday also claiming the Iranian nuclear programme was “severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes” — claims, he said, which were backed by a “body of credible evidence”.
A statement from Ratcliffe posted on X pointed to “new intelligence from a 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 assessment by the US Defence Intelligence Agency had argued that the underground chambers at the Fordow uranium enrichment site, which is buried deep inside a mountain, might not have been completely put out of use. It also said Iran’s declared stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which needs only modest further refinement to turn into missile warheads, may have been moved in advance of the strikes.
Trump has himself given seemingly contradictory accounts, insisting that he was sure the site had been “obliterated” while also saying that the intelligence was “very inconclusive”.
Trump said he did not think that, in any case, Iran would try to rebuild its programme. “The last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now — they want to recover,” he said.
He also gave a rare insight into the choreography of Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the US’s al-Udeid military base in Qatar on Monday, about which the Iranians issued prior warnings through back-channels.
“They were very nice,” Trump said. “They said, ‘We’re gonna shoot ’em, is one o’clock OK?’ I said, ‘It’s fine’.”
On Wednesday, Trump also lent his support to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, calling for his corruption trial to be cancelled.
“Such a WITCH HUNT, for a man who has given so much, is unthinkable to me,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Bibi and I just went through HELL together, fighting a very tough and brilliant long-time enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper, or stronger in his LOVE for the incredible Holy Land.
“Bibi Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State (of Israel).”
