Trump says Iran nuclear program smashed; ceasefire holds

U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend almost completely obliterated the sites, U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday. He added that Iran’s nuclear program was set back by decades. Iran and the United States may have a relationship in the future, he said at a press conference before the second day of NATO meetings in the Netherlands.

Trump’s comments ran counter to leaked information about a Monday Defense Intelligence Agency report. Two anonymous sources familiar with the report told the Associated Press that the facilities were not totally destroyed and that Iran might be able to resume enrichment in a few months. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the press conference that the report was preliminary and was deemed low-confidence, or of uncertain credibility. The leak was politically motivated and the FBI was investigating it, he said.

Hegseth shared Trump’s view on the outcome of the U.S. strikes. He said that the 30,000 pounds of explosives the United States dropped caused devastation at the underground Fordo facility and wiped another off the map. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday also said Iran’s nuclear sites were destroyed.

What did Israel say about the outcome of the strikes? The Israeli Prime Minister’s office said on Wednesday that American bombs destroyed the Fordo site's critical infrastructure and rendered an enrichment facility inoperable. The combined damage of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities set back its program by many years, the office said on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.

What about the tenuous Israel-Iran ceasefire? The ceasefire got off to a rocky start on Tuesday. But Trump said on Wednesday that it’s holding well. He called the situation a victory for everyone, saying both sides took hard hits in the last 12 days of conflict.

Dig deeper: Read Lauren Canterberry’s Tuesday report on operations by both Israel and Iran during the proposed ceasefire period.