Donald Trump compared his strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities to a war-ending nuclear attack, while his own government has given an early assessment that the mission wasn’t the success he’s claimed.
During a press conference Wednesday at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump desperately defended his military strike in Iran, following the leak of an intelligence report from the Pentagon that said that the sites had not been completely destroyed.
“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war, this ended the war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now.”
While Trump may desire the grandeur of his own nuclear attack—he really should not, but obviously, it’s on his mind—it seems he may be a lot closer to former President George W. Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” blunder.
Within hours of the strike on Iran, Trump claimed that U.S. forces had “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the attack had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, according to multiple outlets.
When pressed on the report, Trump said the intelligence had been “very inconclusive,” but that because the report had said that “it could have been very severe,” he understood it to mean “obliteration.”
Just months ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon” when presenting the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment. Trump has repeatedly dismissed that finding, opting instead to believe Israeli intelligence. While speaking at The Hague, the president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”
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