US officials to hold nuclear talks with: Trump

Trump says a deal may not be necessary, insisting Tehran’s nuclear program has been destroyed by Israeli and US air strikes, despite conflicting reports about the extent of the damage.

Donald Trump says he will send officials to hold talks next week with Iran on its nuclear program amid conflicting reports about the damage it had sustained during a bombing campaign.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Mr Trump insisted that the program had been destroyed by Israeli and US air strikes, despite doubts cast by a leaked Pentagon assessment.

“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran,” he said. “We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary.”

In his initial announcement of the US strikes at the weekend on Iran’s three main nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, Mr Trump said they had been “completely and fully obliterated”. However, the Pentagon and Israel said full assessments were still being carried out. The report by the US defence intelligence agency said the US attacks had been only partially successful and would allow Iran to rebuild a nuclear program within months.

The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong” and authorised the release of a more positive assessment by Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission. “The devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable,” it said.

Trump – who at NATO had declared the attackson the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan sites were his “Hiroshima moment” later slightly stepped back from the claim, insisting he was sure the site had been “obliterated” but also said the intelligence was “very inconclusive”, adding that he did not think Iran would try to rebuild its program.

His intelligence chiefs supported him, with CIA Director John Radcliffe saying in a statement that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Amid further contradictory claims, Israeli officials told America’s ABC TV the bunker busting bombs had caused minimal damage, saying the outcome of the strikes were “really not good”.

Iran’s government, on the other hand, claimed its nuclear facilities were “badly damaged.” The country’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told Iran’s Al Mayadeen TV Tehran was preparing to claim compensation for damage to the Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan sites.

The respected Institute for Science and International Security also published a report into the strikes, which found it was likely the facilities had been badly damaged, with Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program “effectively destroyed.”

The report also noted that if the centrifuge cascade hall was breached at Fordow, the hall’s long walls would channel the blast wave through the entire length of the hall, completely destroying all of the installed and otherwise operational centrifuges.

Times, Agencies