Iran's nuclear sites 'severely damaged' by US strikes, CIA says as Trump hails ‘big win’ after NATO agrees defence hike
Iran's nuclear facilities have been "severely damaged" by US strikes, the CIA has said, despite recent reports the attack only set the programme back by a matter of months.
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The head of the CIA took to Twitter on Wednesday to reveal a "body of credible intelligence" suggests Iran's nuclear capabilities have been "severely damaged" by US strikes that took place last week.
"This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years," John Ratcliffe wrote on X.
It comes after Donald Trump said there was ‘no chance’ Iran could have hidden its enriched uranium prior to US strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities.
Speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, the US president said: “We think we hit them so hard so fast they didn’t get a chance to move.
“Many people call it dust. It’s very heavy and hard to move and they were way down, 30 stories down underground, we think it’s covered with granite, concrete and steel.”
Earlier Mr Trump claimed American strikes had set back the country’s nuclear programme by ‘decades’.
NATO chief Mark Rutte suggested Mr Trump dealt with Israel and Iran’s war in the Middle East like a ‘daddy’ stopping children fighting in a schoolyard.
During a press conference ahead of a NATO summit, Trump compared the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities to the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II.
“I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war,” Mr Trump said.
A row had erupted over the scale of damage done to Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
Speaking from the emergency Nato summit in The Hague, Mr Trump, sitting beside Mr Rutte, admitted the "last thing [Iran] want to do is enrich anything right now".
Hitting out at reports suggesting the strike was less successful than the White House claims, Mr Trump branded a host of US media outlets "scum" for their reporting.
Flanked by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, the trio announced that a full FBI investigation into the leak would now take place.
Speaking on Wednesday, the president hailed NATO allies' decision to hike defence spending to 5% of GDP as a "big win."
“When I came here, I came here because it was something I’m supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit different, differently,” Trump said as the summit came to a close.
“I watched the heads of these countries get up, and the love and the passion that they showed for their country was unbelievable.”
Yesterday, Donald Trump refused to confirm the United States is committed to NATO’s Article Five, the alliance’s founding principle.
Every member of NATO must agree to the principle of collective and mutual defence - if one member state is attacked, the others come to its defence.
Known as Article Five, this is the founding principle of the NATO alliance.
But speaking on Tuesday as he travelled to the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, Mr Trump refused to say he was “committed” to the principle.
“Depends on your definition,” he said from Air Force One.