Trump announces resumption of nuclear negotiations with Iran next week
Last Sunday, the president gave the order to bomb three key Iranian nuclear facilities: Natanz, Fordo—located deep beneath a mountain—and Isfahan.
Trump at NATO summit/Brendan Smialowski.
President Donald Trump announced that negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program will resume next week and suggested the two countries may "sign a deal."
On the second day of a fragile ceasefire between the Islamic Republic and Israel, the Republican tycoon assured that he will return to the negotiating table with Tehran, after nuclear talks were derailed by the start of the Israeli offensive on June 13.
"We'll talk next week with Iran, we may sign an agreement, I don't know yet," Trump said at the end of a NATO summit in The Hague in the Netherlands.
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"They're not going to build bombs for a long time."
The president gave the order last Sunday to bomb three key Iranian nuclear facilities: Natanz, Fordo—located deep under a mountain—and Isfahan. With this decision, Washington joined the military campaign of its ally Israel.
The US and Israel said their aim was to truncate the Iranian nuclear program, which Western powers claim seeks to develop an atomic bomb, despite Tehran's defense that it is for civilian purposes.
Trump insisted Wednesday that he believes Iran's nuclear facilities "were totally destroyed."
"They're not going to build bombs for a long time," he stressed, asserting that Iran's atomic program went back "decades."
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqai acknowledged that the nuclear facilities were "severely damaged."
Iran's nuclear facilities were "razed to the ground"
The CIA's own director, John Ratcliffe; and Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in unison backed Washington's official version, citing new intelligence information that they say shows that airstrikes ordered over the weekend by President Donald Trump destroyed several of Tehran's key nuclear facilities.
In their statements, the Trump administration's top intelligence chiefs asserted that the bombings devastatingly impacted the Iranian regime's nuclear capabilities, directly disproving reports published by outlets such as CNN and the New York Times which on Tuesday leaked a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon's intelligence arm, suggesting that Iran's nuclear program had only been delayed for a few months and that its main components, namely enriched uranium and centrifuges, were not significantly impacted.
Iran willing to engage in dialogue
For his part, Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian said Tuesday that Tehran is willing to resume negotiations on its nuclear program, but would continue to insist on legitimate right to develop atomic energy for peaceful use.
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