THE HAGUE, Netherlands—At the NATO Summit’s opening on Wednesday, President Donald Trump lauded U.S. strikes on Iran, claiming they halted the Israel-Iran conflict, likening them to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that ended World War II.
“That hit ended the war. I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war,” Trump told reporters before he met with world leaders at the NATO summit.
Trump said that because of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, “great progress” has been made with regard to Gaza.
“Because of this attack that we made, I think we’re going to have some very good news,” he said.
Trump, sitting beside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, also commented on a recent leaked intelligence report. He said Iran would not have agreed to a cease-fire if the U.S. strikes were unsuccessful.
“Iranians went down to the site afterwards. They said it’s so devastated, and they settled when they saw what we did to it,” Trump said. “If we didn’t do that, they would have had a lot of ammunition to keep going. They wouldn’t have settled. Somebody brought that up, and two Iranians went down to see it, and they called back and they said, ‘This place is gone.’”
The U.S. military conducted airstrikes over the weekend on three Iranian nuclear facilities, which were intended to halt Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. After the strikes, Trump repeatedly said that the nuclear facilities were obliterated.
Trump described the intelligence assessment as “very inconclusive.”
“The intelligence says, ‘we don’t know, it could have been very severe.’ That’s what the intelligence says,” he said.
Trump stated that Israeli intelligence is conducting additional assessments.
Sitting alongside Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the leakers of the alleged intelligence assessment and said Iran “is in bad shape.”
“This is complete and total obliteration,” Rubio told reporters. “They are way behind today compared to where they were just seven days ago.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noted that a leak investigation is underway.
During the meeting, Rutte said the United States taking out the nuclear capability of Iran is a show of the “enormous strength of the American military.”
He noted it was a signal of U.S. strength that went far beyond Iran.
