CONFESSION: US PREZ SAYS ISRAEL 'GOT HIT HARD'

NT Bureau, Agencies
The Hague

Trump says Iran's ballistic missiles took out a lot of buildings, Netanyahu should be relieved now

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged the scale of recent attacks on Israel, saying the country was “hit very hard” by a wave of ballistic missiles, particularly in the last few days. “Israel got hit very hard, especially the last couple of days… Those ballistic missiles — boy, they took out a lot of buildings,” Trump said, in a rare public admission of the damage sustained by Israel. “Bibi Netanyahu should be very proud of himself … they’re [Iran] not going to be building bombs for a long time.”

Regarding the United States’ attack on Iran, Trump said he believed the hits amounted to “total obliteration”. “We had a tremendous victory, a tremendous hit,” he said. “They (Iran) have got a country, and they’ve got oil, and they’re very smart people, and they can come back.''

Trump also said US and Iranian officials will talk next week to continue a dialogue interrupted by the 12-day war between Israel and Iran adding the “war is done”.

Meanwhile, Iran’s parliament passed a bill to suspend cooperation with the UN’s IAEA, which still needs approval from its national security council. Iran said 627 people, including 13 children, were killed and 4,870 wounded since Israel launched its at- tack on June 13.

US intel: Strikes on Iran did not finish nuke sites

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last week- end did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear pro- gram and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it, reports the CNN .

Trump, who’s in the Netherlands attending this week’s NATO summit, pushed back on CNN’s report in a Truth Social post. “One of the most successful military strikes in history,” Trump wrote in the all-caps post adding, “The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed!” The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the after- math of the US strikes, one of the sources said.

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.” Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.”

Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months,” this person added. The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.