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New York Times
11 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Warns U.S. Will Strike Again if Iran Resumes High-Level Uranium Enrichment
President Trump said on Friday that he believed Iran abandoned its nuclear ambitions after recent U.S. and Israeli attacks on its nuclear infrastructure, but warned that he 'absolutely' would be willing to bomb the country again if it resumed enriching uranium to a concerning level. 'Time will tell,' Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, 'But I don't believe that they're going to go back into nuclear anytime soon.' Mr. Trump said such an outcome was unlikely, describing Iran as exhausted from the damage it had suffered and eager to speak with the United States. 'Iran wants to meet,' Mr. Trump said. But in a Truth Social post on Friday, Mr. Trump lashed out at Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for claiming in remarks to his people that Iran had prevailed in its conflict against Israel and the United States. Mr. Trump called Mr. Khamenei's assertion 'a lie' and said that he had spared the Iranian leader's life. He said he 'knew EXACTLY' where Mr. Khamenei was sheltered and chose not to attack him or allow Israel to kill him. 'I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH,' Mr. Trump wrote. Mr. Trump also said in the post that he had begun work in recent days 'on the possible removal of sanctions, and other things' to help Iran 'recover.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Iran trying to 'save face' following US strike on nuclear sites, expert says
Print Close By Stephen Sorace, Anders Hagstrom Published June 26, 2025 As the total damage to three Iranian nuclear sites continues to be assessed, one Middle East expert says that Iran's stated assessment only reinforces U.S. and Israeli views. Israel, which has said the strikes set the Iranian nuclear program back years, has the greatest resources in place to make a determination and the most incentive to get the facts right, Jacob Olidort, director of the Center of American Security at the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital. "Both the US and Israel say they achieved their objectives," Olidort said. "Israel presumably had planned around this for many years, and Israel says it has met its objectives, which is destroying Iran's ability to enrich uranium." The U.S. launched a surprise strike using B-2 stealth bombers and bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities on Saturday. HEGSETH TEARS INTO REPORTERS, ALLEGING THEY 'CHEER AGAINST TRUMP' AND IRAN STRIKES Some media reports have pushed back on the Trump administration's claims that the sites were destroyed and set Iran back years in its quest to achieve a nuclear weapon. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Wednesday told Al Jazeera that "our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that's for sure," though he refused to go into detail. Olidort said that "everything Iran is doing now is to save face." 'THE MISSION WAS ACCOMPLISHED': SENATE REPUBLICANS PUSH BACK AGAINST LEAKED REPORT ON IRAN STRIKES "We should never take anything Iran says at face value, but their assessment can only reinforce the views of Israel and the U.S. view," he said. The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi, reiterated on Thursday that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at Iranian nuclear facilities "is very, very, very considerable." CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage," Grossi told French broadcaster RFI. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Print Close URL
Fox News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Expert reacts to Iran's assessment of damage to nuclear sites
As the total damage to three Iranian nuclear sites continues to be assessed, one Middle East expert says that Iran's stated assessment only reinforces U.S. and Israeli views. Israel, which has said the strikes set the Iranian nuclear program back years, has the greatest resources in place to make a determination and the most incentive to get the facts right, Jacob Olidort, director of the Center of American Security at the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital. "Both the US and Israel say they achieved their objectives," Olidort said. "Israel presumably had planned around this for many years, and Israel says it has met its objectives, which is destroying Iran's ability to enrich uranium." The U.S. launched a surprise strike using B-2 stealth bombers and bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities on Saturday. Some media reports have pushed back on the Trump administration's claims that the sites were destroyed and set Iran back years in its quest to achieve a nuclear weapon. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Wednesday told Al Jazeera that "our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that's for sure," though he refused to go into detail. Olidort said that "everything Iran is doing now is to save face." "We should never take anything Iran says at face value, but their assessment can only reinforce the views of Israel and the U.S. view," he said. The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi, reiterated on Thursday that the damage done by Israeli and U.S. strikes at Iranian nuclear facilities "is very, very, very considerable." "I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage," Grossi told French broadcaster RFI.
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Did the US and Israel really obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities?
Did the US and Israel really obliterate Iran's nuclear facilities? NewsFeed A leaked intelligence report has cast doubt on Trump and Netanyahu's claims that their attacks on Iran destroyed its nuclear programme. Analysts say some facilities weren't even hit, while 400kg of uranium is unaccounted for. Soraya Lennie takes a look. Video Duration 02 minutes 23 seconds 02:23 Video Duration 02 minutes 56 seconds 02:56 Video Duration 02 minutes 22 seconds 02:22 Video Duration 02 minutes 02 seconds 02:02 Video Duration 00 minutes 44 seconds 00:44 Video Duration 00 minutes 18 seconds 00:18 Video Duration 00 minutes 46 seconds 00:46
The National
3 days ago
- Politics
- The National
Israel, Iran and the US are all stuck in traps of their own making
It was one of the most public, personalised and extraordinary schisms between the US and Israel, and certainly the first conducted on television and in real time. US President Donald Trump found himself decisively in over his head, swearing at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and – largely for politically necessary balance – at Iran's leadership, to maintain his ceasefire. On TV, then social media, and finally an angry telephone call. In a flurry of 20 minutes, Israel was compelled to call off a major air strike. As Israel sent aircraft streaking towards Iran in response to a lone missile that, as he noted, may well have been erroneously launched, Mr Trump instantly recognised that he was about to be played. He wasn't going to put up with it. The old dictum about 'no daylight' between American and Israeli positions just can't function with a US President as patrimonial as Mr Trump and an Israeli Prime Minister as prevaricating as Mr Netanyahu. Mr Netanyahu was compelled to hit a minor radar installation site instead. That's how a 48-hour whirlwind of real and phony attacks, theatrical and genuine threats, and an atmosphere of overall mayhem, saw Mr Trump flailing and frustrated. The US President found himself trapped between his characteristically self-serving rhetoric and realities, and between his goals and Mr Netanyahu's ongoing effort to lure the Americans into a protracted conflict with Iran that Mr Trump is still seeking to avoid. As the dust settles, it's unclear what was really accomplished by Israel's 'war of the cities' with Iran launched on June 13, with the important but hardly decisive American footnote last Saturday. Israel did manage to at least postpone what appeared to be promising US-Iranian talks, with an American proposal of Tehran joining a regional 'consortium' for nuclear energy production with key Arab countries as a potential workaround for the vexed problem of Iran's 'right to enrich'. The idea alarmed Israel sufficiently to unleash its barrage, and that, in turn, was successful enough to prompt Mr Trump to join the fray with a single action that was never intended to be the opening salvo of a protracted US bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites. All three parties now find themselves in traps of their own making. It's unclear how much damage was done to Iran's nuclear programme. But Tehran has taken some potent blows, including the devastation of its paramilitary leadership and a generation of top nuclear scientists. Tehran paid a heavy price for playing games with highly enriched uranium, as noted in a damning report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and more broadly for reckless rhetoric about 'destroying' Israel and absurd slogans like 'death to America'. However, Israel has certainly not ensured that Iran will never become a nuclear power. On the contrary, it may have ensured that while Iran proceeds with greater caution, the war has only amplified the already evident lesson that adversarial countries that don't have a nuclear deterrent, like Iraq and Libya, are likely to face external attack while those that do, like North Korea, aren't. Iran has sought a nuclear deterrent since the Shah and that determination will undoubtedly have sharply increased, even among those implacably opposed to the current establishment. The Israelis may have thrown their best punch, leaving Iran bloodied and battered but more determined than ever to eventually become the second nuclear weapons power in the Middle East – Israel itself having long since introduced those weapons to the region. How Israel deals with this new reality, unless it finds a way to resume warfare despite Mr Trump's angry objections, remains to be seen. A satisfactory solution appears farther off than ever. Even Mr Trump, albeit clearly less than his Iranian and Israeli counterparts, has put himself in an unenviable corner without an obvious escape route. His administration is already tying itself into rhetorical contortions over his insistence that the three Iranian nuclear sites he struck were 'completely and totally obliterated', at least in terms of enrichment. Even at the time, it was obvious that he couldn't have been relying on any serious preliminary evaluation, and was simply engaging in his trademark 'truthful hyperbole', as he described his form of self-serving remarks in his ghost-written memoir, The Art of the Deal. Leaked reports from the Defence Intelligence Agency – based on actual preliminary assessments, including new surveillance footage, signals intelligence and very possibly human intelligence from inside Iran – suggest that, on the contrary, while the bunker-buster bomb attacks may have badly damaged entranceways to the Fordow mountainside network, they did not render the interior facilities non-functional or even hard-hit. They concluded that Iran's enrichment work there, and at other sites in question, will be disrupted for months, but hardly 'obliterated'. This is consistent with what one would expect from a strike that would have been only the opening salvo in existing US plans to actually obliterate that facility. These called for round-the-clock bunker-buster strikes over many days, if not weeks, before the tunnel network was collapsed on itself or rendered otherwise fully non-functional. That obviously wasn't going to happen from a handful of impacts, even with such powerful weapons. Israel, too, cannot fully know how much harm it has caused to Iran's nuclear research and development programme. Even Iranian officials are most probably still assessing the true extent. Israel was surely seeking to deliver a knockout blow to the programme, or rather to get Washington to do that for it. Neither seems to have occurred. So, less than two weeks after Israel launched its supposedly decisive war, we are effectively back to square one, albeit with Iran having absorbed significant and painful losses that will take energy, resources and time that the impoverished country can ill afford. Whether Mr Trump can get Iran back to the negotiating table with renewed seriousness remains to be seen, although it would clearly be in Tehran's interests to strike a deal with Washington even now. However, we may eventually look back at this conflict as the moment in which Israel ensured that it would have to live alongside a nuclear-armed Iran rather than having permanently eliminated the prospects for that.
