THE HAGUE: President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed doubts about the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear program by US bomb strikes, and insisted that Tehran’s uranium enrichment facilities had been “completely and fully obliterated.”
Trump also said he believed the war between Iran and Israel was finished, as both sides were keen to end the fight. “I dealt with both and they’re both tired, exhausted,” he said.
Questions over the effectiveness of the strikes on Iran’s underground nuclear plant at Fordow emerged after a leaked preliminary US intelligence assessment, widely reported in US media, suggested that they had inflicted a marginal and temporary setback.
“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said. “They’re not going to be building bombs for a long time,” he said, and the strikes had set the program back by “decades.”
He also rejected suggestions that before the strikes Iran had moved its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which can be developed into fuel for a nuclear bomb.
Trump said the US had not given up its maximum pressure on Iran, but signaled a potential easing of restrictions on selling Iranian oil to China to help the country rebuild.
“They’re going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen,” he said, a day after suggesting that China could continue to purchase Iranian oil. Talks with Iran were planned for next week, he said. “We may sign an agreement. I don’t know.”
The president was speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, at which national leaders committed to spending 5 percent of their GDP on defense by 2035. The move follows years of complaints by Trump that the US pays a disproportionate amount to support the alliance.
He said: “We had a great victory here,” and he hoped the additional funds would be spent on military hardware made in the US.
The new spending target is a jump worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the current goal of 2 percent of GDP, although it will be measured differently.
Countries pledged to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on core defense such as troops and weapons, and 1.5 percent on broader defense-related measures such as cybersecurity, protecting pipelines and adapting roads and bridges to handle heavy military vehicles.
