(SPECIAL ENVOY) Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday the attacks ordered against nuclear facilities in Iran, stating that they put an end to the conflict with Israel similar to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
The President of the United States made these statements at a press conference during the NATO Summit held in The Hague, Netherlands.
“That strike ended the war. I don’t want to use the example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki, but it was essentially the same,” said Trump. “If we hadn’t eliminated those nuclear facilities, they would be fighting right now,” insisted the president.
In this sense, he denied that the attack on Iran was superficial and stressed that it will be “difficult” for Tehran to “rebuild” the facilities because “they collapsed.” According to President Trump, the tunnels of the underground Fordo facility collapsed and it is impossible to enter the center. “It’s over for years and years.”
According to the US president, Iran would not have sat at the negotiating table in any way if nothing had happened, insisting that the operation represented a “complete and total devastation.”
Trump criticizes the media for “downplaying” the success of the attacks
The US president criticized the media that reported that the assessment prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, attached to the Pentagon, states that the bombings did not destroy the central elements of the Iranian nuclear program.
Thus, in front of the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, he criticized CNN and The New York Times as “scum” for their reporting on the American attack on Iran. “They are bad people. They are sick. And what they have done is try to turn this incredible victory into something minor,” he stated.
According to an assessment conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the bombings on the facilities in Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordo suggest that the Iranian nuclear program was only delayed by a few months.