Trump and
Hegseth admit doubts about level of damage to Iran nuclear sites
President
calls intelligence ‘inconclusive’, while defence secretary describes harm to
facilities as ‘moderate to severe’
Julian
Borger in Jerusalem
Wed 25 Jun
2025 17.56 BST
Donald Trump
and the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, have admitted to some doubt over
the scale of the damage inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites by the US bombing at
the weekend, after a leaked Pentagon assessment said the Iranian programme had
been set back by only a few months.
“The
intelligence was very inconclusive,” Trump told journalists at a Nato summit in
The Hague, introducing an element of uncertainty for the first time after
several days of emphatic declarations that the destruction had been total. “The
intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the
intelligence suggests.”
The
president then appeared to revert to his claim that “it was very severe. There
was obliteration”. Later in the day, he claimed that was the conclusion from
“collected intelligence”, and that the Iranian programme had been set back
“decades”.
Trump also
likened the US use of massive bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow and Natanz
uranium enrichment sites to the impact of the US nuclear weapons dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the second world war, using the comparison
specifically in reference to their impact in ending a conflict.
Over the
course of the day, Trump’s claims became more far-reaching, even rejecting
reports from the nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), that Iran’s 400kg stock of 60% enriched uranium could no longer be
accounted for, and appeared to have been moved. Earlier in the week, the vice
president, JD Vance, had appeared to admit the US did not know where the highly
enriched uranium was, and said it would be a subject of discussions with the
Iranians.
Trump
claimed there would be a US-Iran meeting next week to negotiate once more about
Tehran’s nuclear programme. “We’re going to talk to them next week with Iran,
we may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” he said, before adding: “I don’t care
if I have an agreement or not.”
Trump was
also markedly less confident on Wednesday about the ceasefire he had previous
declared was “unlimited” and “going to go forever”, even suggesting that a
return to conflict could be imminent.
“I dealt
with both and they’re both tired, exhausted … and can it start again? I guess
someday, it can. It could maybe start soon,” he said.
Accompanying
Trump to the summit, Hegseth also seemed to downgrade his earlier declaration
that Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons in the future had been
“obliterated”.
On Wednesday
the defence secretary described the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities by US
and Israeli bombing as “moderate to severe”. He pledged there would be an FBI
investigation of Pentagon leaks, but also claimed the leaked information was
false.
Meanwhile
the Israeli military said it was still trying to assess the damage inflicted by
the bombing campaign, but a senior officer insisted: “We pushed them years
backward.”
A statement
issued on behalf of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), said the
strikes had destroyed Fordow’s “critical infrastructure and rendered the
enrichment facility inoperable”. It added that the combined US and Israeli
strikes “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years”.
On Tuesday
night CNN reported on a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) initial
assessment, which tentatively concluded that the deeply buried Fordow site and
the underground facilities at Natanz had not been destroyed, and key components
of the nuclear programme, including centrifuges, were capable of being
restarted within months.
The CNN
account of the leak was independently confirmed as accurate by the Guardian and
other outlets. The Washington Post noted that it was categorised as
“low-confidence”, though a source told the Guardian that further analysis could
find even less damage than the initial DIA estimate.
The DIA
assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium,
which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been
moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites
maintained by Iran.
For several
years, a new facility has been excavated under a mountain, just to the south of
the original Natanz facility.
Providing an
Israeli perspective on Wednesday, the IDF spokesperson Brig Gen Effie Defrin
said the results of the air force’s bombing sorties had been “even better than
we expected”.
“I can say
right now that the estimate is that we struck a significant blow to [Iran’s]
nuclear infrastructure,” Defrin said. “I can say that we pushed them years
backward.”
CNN reported
that Israeli intelligence estimates of the setback inflicted on Iran’s nuclear
aspirations were two years.
The IAEA
director general, Rafael Grossi, rejected what he described as an “hourglass
approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would
take Iran to rebuild, arguing it distracted from finding a long-term solution
to an issue that had not been resolved.
“In any
case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is
there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi
said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear
sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.
Nuclear
experts described the development as a potential disaster for nonproliferation
efforts, and warned of the dangers of Iran deciding to eject the remaining IAEA
inspectors in the country and leave the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty
(NPT). The treaty obliges Iran and other non-nuclear weapon countries to
refrain from any efforts to make a bomb, and to undergo monitoring and
verification.
Iran’s
parliament is preparing a bill clearing the way for a departure from the NPT.
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