U.S. President Donald Trump has likened American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to the end of World War II, claiming the operation ended the Iran-Israel conflict despite intelligence assessments suggesting limited impact.
Speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday, President Donald Trump defended the scale and effectiveness of recent U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, calling the damage “very severe” and comparing it to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"The intelligence was ... very inconclusive," Trump said during a joint appearance with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “It was very severe. It was obliteration.”
His remarks follow reports by Reuters and other media outlets that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) believes the strikes may have set Iran’s nuclear programme back by only a few months.
Trump dismissed the report as preliminary and accused the media of undermining the military operation. “It was an attack against our pilots,” he said, referring to news coverage of the DIA’s assessment.
Trump claimed the operation brought an end to the hostilities between Iran and Israel, stating: “When you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, that ended a war, too. This ended a war in a different way.”
The president was joined at the summit by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Both echoed Trump’s scepticism of the intelligence community’s evaluation, with Hegseth calling the leaked DIA report “low-confidence” and “politically motivated”.
He also revealed that the FBI is investigating the source of the leak. Rubio, meanwhile, accused those who shared the report of mischaracterising its findings, saying: “This is the game they play.”
The Trump administration has long maintained that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. The strikes, though controversial, are being promoted by The White House as evidence of its firm stance.
Trump’s defence of the operation comes amid political pressure from some within his own base who argue that the strikes contradict his “America First” approach.
Still, the administration touted a diplomatic breakthrough at the summit, with NATO members agreeing to increase their defence spending to 5% of GDP — a goal the U.S. had pushed for.
In a final statement, Trump cited an Israeli Atomic Energy Commission report claiming Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been pushed back “many years”. He also confirmed that U.S. and Iranian officials are expected to meet next week, though he added that Tehran is unlikely to resume its nuclear programme after the strikes.
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