US President Trump doubles down on his assertion that the Iranian nuclear programme has been set back by decades.
The United States’ strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday failed to destroy underground facilities, and set Tehran’s nuclear programme back only by a few months, according to an assessment of a confidential American intelligence report.
The “top secret” document prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – and published by major US news outlets on Tuesday is at odds with President Donald Trump’s claims about the strikes. Trump has insisted that the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were “obliterated” by a combination of bunker busting and conventional bombs.
Trump and his administration’s senior officials are dismissing the intelligence report and calling out the reporting over the DIA’s assessment as “fake news”.
Speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, the US president said he believed Iran’s nuclear programme was set back by decades.
