US president denies multiple reports and accounts that say US strikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
United States President Donald Trump has reiterated a vow not to allow Iran to get nuclear weapons following the end of Iran and Israel’s recent 12-day conflict, in which the US militarily intervened, and has stuck closely to his narrative as questions remain about the impact of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.
On the Fox News programme Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Trump repeated his claim that Iran was “weeks away” from making the weapons before Israel attacked on June 13. Nine days later, the US targeted Iran’s top three nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
Both US intelligence and the United Nations nuclear watchdog have ascertained that Tehran was not building a nuclear arsenal. Iran has long insisted that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.
While Trump has said that the sites were “obliterated” by the US bombers, in the wake of the attacks, several major news organisations, citing intelligence sources, have reported that the US strikes did not destroy the facilities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday that it was unclear what damage had been sustained at the Fordow plant, which houses the bulk of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear weapon.
On Sunday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said Iran could restart uranium enrichment in a matter of months, while Trump insisted over the weekend that the attacks had set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back “by decades”.
According to an IAEA report last month, Iran has more than 400kg (880lb) of uranium enriched to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90 per cent weapons grade – which is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons.
Trump told Fox News that the news outlets questioning the efficacy of the attacks he ordered and lauded were spreading “fake news”.
“It’s just horrible and I could see it happening, and they [news outlets] tried to build that into a story, but then it turned out, no, it was obliterated like nobody has ever seen before and that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions at least for a period of time,” Trump said.
On whether or not Iran would restart its nuclear programme following the end of the conflict, Trump said, “The last thing they want to do right now is think about nuclear.”
During the attack on the sites, reports emerged that Iran had removed the enriched uranium from Fordow, but Trump claimed that was false.
“It’s a very hard thing to do, plus we didn’t give them much notice because they didn’t know we were coming until just then and nobody thought we would go after that site because everybody said that site was impenetrable… it’s at the bottom of a mountain and it’s granite,” he said.
“[But] the bomb went through it like butter, like it was absolute butter,” he said.
Trade talks
Separately, Trump told Fox that US trade talks with Canada would be stopped “until such time as they drop certain taxes” after Canada pushed ahead with a new digital services tax on foreign and domestic technology companies.
Regarding a trade deal with China, Trump said that while Washington, DC has a large trade deficit with Beijing, the US was currently “getting along” with China.
The president added that he had found a buyer for the social media platform TikTok, by a group of “very wealthy people”, who he will reveal in about two weeks after he extended a ban on the app for the third time, for another 90 days.