Trump says US strike impaired Iran's nukes. What does Pentagon say? Live updates

USA Today

5 hours ago

Trump's comments on the intelligence assessment were made ahead of the meeting with world leaders at a NATO summit.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday shrugged off a Pentagon assessment suggesting a U.S. bombing raid may not have severely damaged Iran's nuclear capability, saying Iran's program had been set back "basically decades, because I don't think they'll ever do it again."
Iran and Israel were both claiming victory in the short but deadly conflict as the world waited to determine whether a ceasefire would hold.
Israeli Prime Miniser Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had achieved the goals of its attacks on Iran by destroying the nation's nuclear program. Trump had said U.S. bombers "obliterated" Iranian nuclear sites when they dropped 14 "bunker-buster'' bombs on three facilities.
But a Pentagon intelligence assessment now says the 30,000-pound weapons did not reach deep enough to destroy the underground installations and likely only delayed Iran's nuclear program by a few months. Trump said Wednesday the intelligence was inconclusive.
"The intelligence says we don't know. It could've been very severe, that's what the intelligence suggests," Trump told reporters ahead while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at a NATO summit in the Netherlands. "It was very severe. There was obliteration."
Iran says nuclear program still on track
In Iran, the Supreme National Security Council declared that the Islamic Republic's military response to the attack forced Israel and its Western supporters to unilaterally halt offensive operations. And Iran's top nuclear official, Mohammad Eslami, told the Mehr News Agency that preparations made ahead of the attack will prevent any hiatus in progress for Iran's nuclear industry.
Israel's sweeping assault, which began June 13, targeted military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment facilities and Iran's ballistic missile program.
The war has been costly. Iranian Health Minister Mohammad Reza Zafarqandi said more than 600 Iranians have been killed by Israeli missiles. Iran's missile attacks in response killed about 30 and wounded thousands in Israel, severely damaging apartment buildings, a university and a hospital, according to the Times of Israel.
Trump says ceasefire 'in effect': President scolds Iran, Israel
Some Americans fear war's violence could reach US
Some residents and tourists in major American cities say they feel uneasy about the possibility of violence breaking out at home. At New York's Penn Station, Catherine Wagoner, a kindergarten teacher from Boston waiting for her train home after visiting friends, told USA TODAY she felt less safe traveling since the attacks in Iran.
'Being in New York feels more of a threat – more of a target,' she said, adding, 'I definitely have a lot of privilege, and I don't feel like I'm necessarily the target, so I can recognize that. But I just have a constant state of anxiety about the state of the world.'
Wagoner's feelings were echoed in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll that surveyed 1,139 U.S. adults nationwide and found that some 79% of respondents said they worried "that Iran may target U.S. civilians in response to the U.S. airstrikes." Read more here.
− Christopher Cann and Michael Collins
What nuclear capability does Iran have?
The U.S. intelligence community has been consistent: It does not believe Iran has been building a nuclear weapon. U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said as much when she testified to Congress about Iran's nuclear program in March.
U.S. spy agencies, Gabbard said, 'continue to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003."
Trump and Netanyahu dismissed that assessment. Trump has doubted U.S. intelligence agencies before − for example, over who was responsible for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi (it was Saudi Arabia). Netanyahu, meanwhile, has been talking about Iran's existential nuclear threat to Israel for as along as he's been in the public eye.
Still, U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump, Netanyahu and the United Nations' nuclear watchdog − the International Atomic Energy Agency − agree on the issue of Iran's uranium.
All believe Iran has developed a large stockpile, and at a sufficiently enriched level, to sustain a nuclear reaction that could be used in a bomb if it decided to. But how quickly Iran could then "sprint to a nuclear weapon," as Gen. Michael E. Kurilla put it on June 10, is also a matter of dispute, and estimates range from one week to one year.
−Kim Hjelmgaard
Why did the US strike Iran nuke facilities?
Trump ordered the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities − Operation Midnight Hammer − effectively joining a war that Israel started on June 13 when it began bombing Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. Israel said it helped the U.S. coordinate and plan the strikes.
Trump said all three sites were "totally obliterated." But an independent assessment has not yet been carried out. The International Atomic Energy Agency − the United Nation's nuclear watchdog − released a statement saying that so far it had not detected an increase in "off-site radiation levels," one of the feared consequences of the strikes.
Contributing: Reuters