Trump says early report on damage to Iran's nuclear program was inconclusive

WASHINGTON, D.C. and THE HAGUE — President Trump on Wednesday said that a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment of the damage caused by U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities was inconclusive, but said he continues to believe it was severe.

"The intelligence was very inconclusive. The intelligence says, 'We don't know, it could have been very severe' — that's what the intelligence says," Trump told reporters as he attended meetings at a NATO summit.

"The original word that I used — I guess it got us in trouble, because it's a strong word — it was 'obliteration.' And you'll see that — and it's going to come out. Israel is doing a report on it, I understand. And I was told that they said it was total obliteration," Trump said.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly on Tuesday said early intelligence assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency showed the Saturday night strikes did not "obliterate" Iran's nuclear enrichment program but instead set it back "a few months." CNN first published news of the DIA assessment.

A satellite image of Iran's Fordo nuclear site shows clusters of new craters likely caused by U.S. bunker buster bombs dropped over the weekend following orders by President Trump.

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Satellite image ©2025 Maxar Technologies

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Trump has used the word 'obliteration' to describe the damage

The assessment comes less than a day after a ceasefire declared by Trump between Israel and Iran went into effect, with both sides agreeing to end the fighting. Israel has said repeatedly that its goal in the war had been to stop Iran's nuclear program, and prevent it from the ability to make a nuclear weapon — a goal long-shared by the United States.

The U.S. used massive bunker-buster bombs on Saturday to target three of Iran's key nuclear facilities, including one called Fordo, built deep inside a mountain. Speaking at the White House after those strikes, Trump called the strikes a "spectacular military success" and said Iran's enrichment facilities had been "completely and totally obliterated," he said.

But the U.S. official NPR spoke to said that the intelligence assessment concluded there had been "limited" damage to the critical infrastructure at the Fordo facility in particular.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters traveling with Trump that the U.S. bombing was a "flawless mission" that caused "devastation underneath Fordo." Hegseth said the early U.S. intelligence report was "preliminary, it was low-confidence" and indicated "moderate to severe" damage at Fordo — "and we believe far more likely severe, and obliterated."

Hegseth said the FBI was investigating how the report, which he said was top secret, was leaked to reporters.

Independent experts are skeptical that the strikes destroyed Iran's nuclear program

Independent experts NPR talked to in the day after the U.S. strikes said that Iran's nuclear enterprise is far from destroyed after analyzing commercial satellite imagery.

"At the end of the day there are some really important things that haven't been hit," says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, who tracks Iran's nuclear facilities. "If this ends here, it's a really incomplete strike."

Experts have long warned that Iran's nuclear ability doesn't just lie in its facilities, but also in its deep knowledge — something much more difficult to attack.

"The simple fact is that Israel was never going to be able to eliminate Iran's capacity to build nuclear weapons entirely if Iranians choose to do so," says Kenneth Pollack, vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute. "The knowledge is just too widespread within the Iranian system."

Iranian officials have said they will proceed

In a statement on X in Farsi, Iran's speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said that Iran would "completely disregard" Israel's demands to stop enriching uranium, a key component to a nuclear weapon. He said Iran will continue to proceed in their own self interests.

The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, Hamad Eslami, told a semi-official Iranian news agency that they were still assessing the damage from Saturday night's attacks, but had prepared in advance. "Our plan is to not allow any interruption in the production and service process," he said.

Trump said he believes that Iran did not have enough time to remove enriched nuclear material from Fordo before the strikes, saying it was "very hard and very dangerous" to remove the material. "We believe it's all down there," Trump said.

A Senate briefing has been delayed

Military officials provided an early assessment of the intel to select senators, the U.S. official told NPR. That included Virginia's Mark Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"I have a whole lot of questions for this administration," Warner told All Things Considered in an interview on Tuesday. "What are the next steps? How do we make sure that there's not Iran racing now to a dirty bomb? These are questions that we and frankly, the American people, deserve answers to."

The full Senate had been slated to get a classified briefing from the administration Tuesday afternoon, but it was cancelled and moved later in the week.

NPR's Tom Bowman contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.