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    Trump officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in strikes on Iran

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    Donald Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.The growing row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the Associated Press.“This was a devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday, apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the intelligence was “inconclusive”.Senior Trump officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear programme were capable of being restarted within months. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that “new intelligence confirms” what Trump has stated.“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she said.CIA director John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”During a news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.In the wake of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the Associated Press.Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad”.Classified briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.The leaked DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead, had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost “visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.However, in an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said: “I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.“As for what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.The US military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg (30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.The White House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the facilities have suffered significant damage.On Wednesday evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news” reports about the limited impact of the strikes.As the row grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.Trump said US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations were no longer necessary.
    “I don’t care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”View image in fullscreenThe IAEA has rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.Meanwhile, Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and activists.Iran’s intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.Some in Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign, which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.While numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet of any significant protests against the authorities.With the Associated Press and Reuters More

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      David Lammy refuses to say if UK supported US strikes on Iran nuclear facilities

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      The UK foreign secretary has repeatedly refused to say if the UK supported the US military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday or whether they were legal.Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday for the first time since the US launched airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, David Lammy also sidestepped the question of whether he supported recent social media posts by Donald Trump that seemed to favour regime change in Tehran, saying that in all his discussions in the White House the sole focus had been on military targets.Lammy said western allies were waiting for battlefield assessments of the impact of the strikes, but it was possible Iran still had a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, although the strikes “may also have set back Iran’s nuclear programme by several years”.Ever since the US strikes, senior figures in the Labour government have tried to make their criticism of the action only implicit rather than explicit.Lammy tried to focus on urging Iran to return to the negotiating table, insisting that Iran was in breach of its obligations by enriching uranium at levels of purity as high as 60%.The UK Foreign Office has denied Iranian reports that in a phone call on Sunday with the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, Lammy had expressed regret about the US strikes.Asked if the airstrikes were legal, Lammy said three times it was for Washington to answer such questions.But in the course of a 15-minute interview on BBC Radio 4, he at no point backed the US airstrikes, saying he was not going to get into the issues of whether they conformed with either article 2 or article 51 of the UN charter, clauses that permit military action in self-defence.Saying “there is still an off-ramp for the Iranians”, he admitted discussions with Iran involving France, Germany and the UK last Friday in Geneva had been “very tough”.He said: “Everyone is urging the Iranians to get serious about the negotiations with the E3 and the US.” Iran is currently refusing to talk to the US or Israel while it is under military attack.Lammy said he still believed Iran was engaging in “deception and obfuscation” about its nuclear programme, but added “yes, they [the Iranians] can have a civil nuclear capability that is properly monitored that involves outsiders but they cannot continue to enrich to 60 %”.His remarks left open whether the UK supported the US negotiating position of insisting on zero uranium enrichment inside the country, or whether he was prepared to accept that Iran could enrich to 3.67% level of purity, the maximum allowed in the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015 and from which the UK, unlike the US, has not withdrawn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also refused to say if he agreed with the latest US intelligence assessment that Iran was close to securing a nuclear weapon, saying instead he relied on the report from the UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. In its latest reporting, the IAEA said it had no evidence that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb.He said: “You can only deal with the Iranian nuclear programme diplomatically. If Iran is able to enrich beyond 60%, is able to get a weapon, what we will see is nuclear proliferation across the Middle East.”Asked about Trump’s references to regime change he said: “I recognise there is a discussion about regime change but that is not what is under consideration at this time. The rhetoric is strong but I can tell you, having spoken to the secretary of state, having sat in the White House, that this targeted action is to deal with Iran’s nuclear capability.”When pressed to comment on a claim by Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, that by “being blind” on the issue of the legality of the US’s action, European leaders undermined their position on Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Russia, Lammy insisted there was no moral equivalence between the Russian invasion of a sovereign country and the actions the US had taken in Iran. More

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      JD Vance claims US is at war with Iran’s nuclear program, not Iran

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      JD Vance has said the US is “not at war” with Iran – but is with its nuclear weapons program, holding out a position that the White House hopes to maintain over the coming days as the Iranian regime considers a retributive response to Saturday’s US strike on three of its nuclear installations.In an interview Sunday with NBC News’ Meet the Press, the US vice-president was asked if the US was now at war with Iran.“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance replied. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”But Vance declined to confirm with absolute certainty that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely destroyed, a position that Donald Trump set out in a Saturday night address when the president stated that the targeted Iranian facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” in the US strikes.Vance instead said that he believes the US has “substantially delayed” Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.“I’m not going to get into sensitive intelligence about what we’ve seen on the ground there in Iran, but we’ve seen a lot, and I feel very confident that we’ve substantially delayed their development of a nuclear weapon, and that was the goal of this attack,” Vance said.He continued: “Severely damaged versus obliterated – I’m not exactly sure what the difference is.“What we know is we set their nuclear program back substantially.”An Iranian member of parliament claimed on Sunday that the Fordo enrichment plant, the focus of seven B-2 bombers armed with 14 premier bunker-busters from the US arsenal, was not seriously damaged.Those bombers returned to Missouri on Sunday.Separately, Bloomberg News said satellite images of the site undermined the Trump administration’s claims that Iran’s underground nuclear sites at Fordo and Natanz had been destroyed.Satellite images distributed by Maxar Technologies showed new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge. But the main support building at the facility remained undamaged, the report said.Maxar said in a statement that images of Natanz showed a new crater about 5.5 meters (18ft) in diameter over the underground facility – but they did not offer conclusive evidence that the 40-meter-deep nuclear engineering site had been breached.The chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said at a Pentagon briefing on Sunday: “Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”Nuclear non-proliferation analysts are conflicted on whether the strikes will be effective in bringing Iran to the negotiating table or convince them to move more decisively toward enriching uranium stockpiles to weapons-grade, assembling a bomb, and manufacturing a delivery system.In a statement to Bloomberg, Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said there were slim prospects that the US entering the war would convince Iran to increase International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cooperation. The nuclear watchdog has said it is not sure where Iran’s 400lb stockpile of 60% uranium is.“The more likely scenario is that they convince Iran that cooperation and transparency don’t work and that building deeper facilities and ones not declared openly is more sensible to avoid similar targeting in future,” Dolzikova said.Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he planned to fly to Moscow to meet with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, on Monday morning for consultations. Separately, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his forces were progressing toward its goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats.“We are moving step after step to achieve these goals. We are very, very close to completing them,” he said. More

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      Iran’s Fordo Nuclear Site Said to Look Severely Damaged, Not Destroyed

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      Initial military assessments of the buried nuclear site contrast with the statement on the strike there made by President Trump.After overnight strikes on Iran, President Trump on Sunday declared the operation a “success,” and said that Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated.” But his early public pronouncements contrast with more cautious assessments by the U.S. and Israeli militaries.The Israeli military, in an initial analysis, believes the heavily fortified nuclear site at Fordo has sustained serious damage from the American strike on Sunday, but has not been completely destroyed, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the matter. The officials also said it appeared Iran had moved equipment, including uranium, from the site.A senior U.S. official similarly acknowledged that the American strike on the Fordo site did not destroy the heavily fortified facility but said the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The person noted that even 12 bunker-busting bombs could not destroy the site.The damage assessments by Israel and the United States are ongoing, and they have not made any final conclusions. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.In its overnight strikes, the United States took aim at three nuclear site, including dropping 30,000 pound, bunker-busting bombs on Fordo, Iran’s most critical site.In a briefing Sunday morning, top Pentagon officials echoed President Trump’s claims of success, while also saying the final assessment would take time. Gen. Dan Caine, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the initial assessment indicated that all three sites sustained “severe damage and destruction,” but added that it was too soon to say whether Iran retained some nuclear capability.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pentagon Details Multipronged Attack on Iranian Nuclear Sites

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      B-2 stealth bombers, fighter aircraft and submarine-launched cruise missiles struck Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan during “Operation Midnight Hammer.”Senior Pentagon officials on Sunday described an extraordinary coordinated military operation targeting Iran that took place under utmost secrecy and showcased what the American military was capable of when it put in place its doctrine of using air and naval forces to strike an adversary.But neither Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nor Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could immediately say whether Iran still retained the ability to make a nuclear weapon. Mr. Hegseth repeated President Trump’s assertion from the previous night that the nuclear sites had been “obliterated.” General Caine did not.The final battle damage assessment for the military operation against Iran, General Caine said, was still to come. He said the initial assessment showed that all three of the Iranian nuclear sites that were struck “sustained severe damage and destruction.”Mr. Hegseth and General Caine, appearing before reporters in the Pentagon’s briefing room for the first time since they took office, described an intricate operation that began at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, home to the B-2 stealth bombers used in the strikes, and hit three nuclear sites in a span of less than a half-hour — 6:40 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday.The bombers took off in secrecy on Friday night from Missouri for the more than 7,000-mile trip, which involved multiple refuelings. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea to reach the skies above Iran, where they struck the heavily fortified nuclear site at Fordo, as well as facilities at Natanz.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will Iran Decide to Retaliate Against the U.S.?

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      The Supreme Leader may choose to back down after a first round of retaliation, or prefer martyrdom and building a nuclear weapon.In July 1988, faced with bleak prospects in its war with an American-backed Iraq, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, decided reluctantly to accept a cease-fire and end the conflict.“It’s like drinking from a chalice of poison,” he told Iranians. But the survival of the young Islamic Republic depended on swallowing.His successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, now faces a similar decision. But having led the country since 1989 and rebuilt it as a regional and nuclear power, it is by no means clear that he will make the same choice.At 86, with much of his life’s work in ruins around him, he may prefer martyrdom to the surrender that President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are demanding of him.Iran’s first response was defiant. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is resolved to defend Iran’s territory, sovereignty, security and people by all force and means against the United States’ criminal aggression,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.Iran has already launched a serious barrage of missiles on Israel. It may, as it has warned, attack some of the 40,000 American soldiers in the region.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Military Is Pulled Back Into Middle East Wars

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      The strikes on Iran ushered in a period of high alert as the Pentagon braced for almost-certain retaliation against American forces in the region.The U.S. strikes on nuclear sites in Iran are an extraordinary turn for a military that was supposed to be moving on from two decades of forever wars in the Middle East, and they put the United States back on war footing.Across the region, where more than 40,000 American troops are on bases and warships, the strikes ushered in a period of high alert as the Pentagon braced for almost-certain retaliation from Iran.President Trump announced on social media that three Iranian sites were hit, including the mountain facility at Fordo. The bombs used in the strikes are believed to include “bunker busters,” which are designed to destroy deep underground bunkers or well-buried weapons in highly protected facilities.A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence said that multiple 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs were dropped on Fordo, and that initial damage assessments indicated that the facility had been “taken off the table.”The strikes, whether successful or not, are likely to trigger a fierce response. Tehran has vowed to strike at American bases in the Middle East, and American intelligence agencies confirmed before the strikes took place that Iran would take steps to widen the war and hit U.S. forces in the region. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence, said the strikes against the three nuclear sites were complete. The official said no follow-up attacks were expected, although commanders were ready to respond to any Iranian retaliation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No U.S. Decision on Joining War Yet, Though It Could Come in Days, Israeli Officials Say

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      Israel on Saturday struck sites in southwestern Iran that would most likely be on any potential flight path used by U.S. warplanes on the way to attack a key Iranian nuclear facility.The Trump administration has not told the Israeli military whether the United States plans to join the war on Iran, two Israeli defense officials said on Saturday.But the two officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters, said they believed that Washington was likely to enter the war and that it was already making preparations to do so.Based on Israeli conversations with their American counterparts over the past two days, the officials said, a U.S. strike on Iran could take place in the coming days.President Trump was scheduled to meet with his national security team at the White House on Saturday evening to discuss the possibility of joining Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear sites. While the White House has said Mr. Trump has not made a final decision on an attack, the United States has dispatched several Air Force B-2 bombers from an American base and across the Pacific.The bombers can carry the 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs Mr. Trump is considering dropping on Fordo, the heavily fortified underground nuclear facility in Iran that is critical to its nuclear program.The planes could provide options to the president, even if they are not ultimately deployed. In moving the B-2 bombers — and allowing the public to know about it — the White House may also be seeking to pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Buys Himself Time, and Opens Up Some New Options

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      While President Trump appears to be offering one more off ramp to the Iranians, he also is bolstering his own military options.President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work.But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.The deal that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected earlier this month, which would have cut off Iran’s main pathway to a bomb by eventually ending enrichment on Iranian soil, may look very different now that one of its largest nuclear centers has been badly damaged and the president is openly considering dropping the world’s largest conventional weapon on the second. Or, it may simply harden the Iranians’ resolve not to give in.It is also possible, some experts noted, that Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday was an effort to deceive the Iranians and get them to let their guard down.“That could be cover for a decision to strike, immediately,” James G. Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral and the former supreme U.S. commander in Europe, said on CNN. “Maybe this is a very clever ruse to lull the Iranians into a sense of complacency.”Even if there is no deception involved, by offering one more off-ramp to the Iranians, Mr. Trump will also be bolstering his own military options. Two weeks allows time for a second American aircraft carrier to get into place, giving U.S. forces a better chance to counter the inevitable Iranian retaliation, with whatever part of their missile fleet is still usable. It would give Israel more time to destroy the air defenses around the Fordo enrichment site and other nuclear targets, mitigating the risks to U.S. forces if Mr. Trump ultimately decided to attack.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More