The president pushed back on an intelligence report saying the strikes only set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by a few months.
President Trump said he doesn’t think a nuclear deal with Iran is necessary after the U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, though he added there would be talks with Tehran next week. He said the U.S. would be asking the Iranians for the same thing before Israel attacked Iran. "We want no nuclear," the president said, adding: "We destroyed the nuclear."
Speaking from the NATO summit, Trump said he believed the cease-fire between Israel and Iran would hold. The president signaled that he wouldn’t stop China from buying oil from Iran, saying Tehran needs the money “to put that country back into shape.”
Trump also pushed back on a leaked intelligence report that said the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities only set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by a few months. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the FBI has started a probe into how the preliminary assessment became public.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, which produced the classified report, on Wednesday said the report was “a preliminary, low-confidence assessment—not a final conclusion.”
Israel’s atomic agency said the U.S. and Israeli strikes together have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years, although Israel’s military and intelligence services are still investigating the extent of the damage.
