‘Fake news’: Donald Trump blasts media reports, asserts nuclear sites in Iran ‘completely destroyed’

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at media reports which cast doubts on his assertions that the air strikes in Iran had "obliterated" Tehran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

 

“FAKE NEWS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social and emphasised that the nuclear sites in Iran have been destroyed.

 

“CNN, together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed!,” he said.

 

The President was responding to a CNN report which, citing an intelligence assessment, said the American military strikes had failed to destroy Tehran’s nuclear capability and only set it back by a few months.

 

The assessment, which is at odds with Trump’s repeated claims, was produced by the Defence Intelligence Agency.

 

Quoting two people familiar with the assessment, CNN reported that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the sources even claimed that the enriched uranium had been moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

 

Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the US on Tuesday after twelve days of intense war which had seen a dramatic escalation on Sunday when the US joined Tel Aviv and carried out military strikes in three Iranian nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.

 

It was the first time the bunker-busting American bomb known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator had been used in combat.

 

The bomb carries a conventional warhead, and is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 metres) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.

 

According to the intelligence report, the strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse underground buildings. Some centrifuges still remained intact after the attacks, it said.

 

Earlier, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also echoed Trump and said the attack on Iran had removed the threat of nuclear annihilation.

 

"We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles," Netanyahu had said. 

Middle East