US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities caused by US missile strikes over the weekend was severe, even as he said the available intelligence on the matter was inconclusive, Reuters reported.
His comments followed US media reports that the US Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that the strikes had set Iran’s nuclear programme back just a few months, despite administration officials’ claims that the programme had been curtailed. “The intelligence was… very inconclusive,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ahead of the summit in The Hague.
“The intelligence says, ‘We don’t know, it could have been very serious.’ That’s what the intelligence says. So I think that’s correct, but I think we can say, ‘We don’t know.'” “It was very serious. It was destruction,” Trump added.
The US President also stressed that the Iran nuclear deal had been delayed “for decades, basically, because I don’t think they’ll ever do it again.”