President Donald Trump had said the weekend strikes “totally obliterated” their targets, and dismissed reports casting doubt on the claim. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X Tuesday that the intelligence finding of limited impact — reported earlier by CNN among others — was “flat-out wrong,” and “a clear attempt to demean President Trump.”
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, appeared on Fox News Tuesday night and called reports that the mission didn’t achieve its objective “completely preposterous.”Trump brokered a ceasefire to end the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran that appeared to be holding late Tuesday, with no reported attacks for several hours. The president had earlier lashed out at both countries, and particularly Israel, over violations. “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” he posted. Both nations have said they’ll honor the truce provided their enemy did likewise.
The prospect of de-escalation between Israel and Iran has triggered a slump in oil prices — erasing almost all of the increase since the conflict broke out.
Still, the ceasefire remains fragile as the focus shifts back to nuclear diplomacy. A stated goal of the American and Israeli strikes was to destroy Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, adding urgency to assessments of how much damage was done.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told Fox News that the country’s atomic program “has been set back significantly,” adding that it’s hard to specify whether that means months or years.
Grossi said inspections should resume “as soon as possible” to determine what’s happened to Iran’s stocks of uranium enriched to 60% levels, not far short of the 90% required to build a bomb. The IAEA says it last verified those inventories a few days before Israel’s June 13 attack, and their whereabouts is now unknown.The DIA’s report found considerable damage on the surface at the nuclear sites, with the US strikes likely to have set Iran’s program back by several months to as much as a year, according to a person briefed on the report’s contents said.
The findings comport with open-source satellite imagery that shows new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge but no conclusive evidence that the attack breached the most heavily protected underground facilities.
Before the strikes Trump had said Iran was “weeks away” from having a nuclear bomb, though some experts and US intelligence estimates said it could take months or years for the nation to develop a more carefully constructed weapon.
One American official, who asked not to be identified discussing private assessments, said Tuesday that US and Israeli strikes had set back Iran’s ability to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, but the US was still waiting on further intelligence to say anything more definitive. The DIA assessment has been shared with House and Senate leadership.
The US strikes involved dropping more than a dozen 30,000-pound so-called bunker-buster bombs on Iranian nuclear sites, their first use in combat, according to the Pentagon. Tomahawk missiles were also fired from an US Ohio-class submarine in the Arabian Sea.
Before Israel’s attack on Iran, the US had held five rounds of negotiations with the Islamic Republic, seeking a diplomatic solution to concerns over its nuclear program — effectively a replacement for the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump abandoned during his first term. An agreement hadn’t been reached, though a sixth round was scheduled before the Israeli missiles rendered it obsolete.
Tehran has insisted on its rights under international law to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. In calls with regional counterparts reported by state media on Tuesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian appeared to reiterate that stance. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is solely pursuing its legitimate rights and has no ambitions beyond that,” he told UAE counterparts.
Since the war started, 606 people have been killed in Iran, according to the government. In Israel, emergency services have said 28 people were killed by Iranian missile strikes, including four on Tuesday morning just as the truce was to take effect.
Israeli authorities said Tuesday that wartime safety directives had been lifted. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation that immediate threats from Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles had been eliminated — though his military chief Eyal Zamir cautioned that “the campaign against Iran is not over.”
