United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to steal the limelight for bringing an end to the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict, saying the US military strikes against Iranian nuclear targets effectively brought the hostilities to a close which caused havoc to civilian lives and assets on both sides. He made the contentious comparison of last week’s military strikes with the US nuclear attacks on Japan in 1945 that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Trump Claims Iran Has Abandoned Nuclear Ambitions
Asked about Iran’s nuclear program, Trump said Tehran “went through hell” during the 12-day war, which forced it to forgo its nuclear weapon ambitions.
“I don’t think they will ever do it again. They will take their oil, they will take their missiles and have their defence… I think they have had it. They just went through hell. The last thing they would want to do is enrich. They had been trying to enrich… by the way, it is hard to enrich.
They spent trillions of dollars trying to do this thing, but they couldn’t come up with this,” he told reporters in The Hague.
Trump Draws Parallel to Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings
He said the US and Iran were getting along well.
“We are actually getting along with them very well right now. Had we not succeeded in that hit… that hit ended the war…I don’t want to use the example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but it is essentially the same thing – that thing ended that war, this thing ended this war,” he said.
The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which killed more than 2 lakh people, the majority being civilians. Within days of the attack, the government of Japan declared unconditional surrender to the Allied forces, and thereby the long World War 2 came to an end. The attacks are the sole nuclear bombings in warfare.
Donald Trump Dismisses Intelligence Report on Iran Strikes
Trump challenged an intelligence report that concluded that the airstrikes he had ordered against Iran had only a modest effect on its nuclear development, although the analysis was by the Pentagon, reported Bloomberg.
“The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed,” Trump said on Truth Social. He said CNN and the New York Times, which first reported the intelligence findings on Tuesday, “have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history.”
Israel initiated the war by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities and assassinating the nation’s leading nuclear scientists. It claimed it aimed to bring an end to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Iran Maintains Its Uranium Enrichment Was Peaceful
Iran maintained that it had enriched uranium for peaceful use and not for developing nuclear weapons. Iran and Israel both shot salvos at each other for 12 days.
Trump recently directed attacks on nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan last week. He then reported that the attacks “totally obliterated” their targets.
Trump arranged a ceasefire to end the 12-day battle between Israel and Iran that seemed to be holding on Wednesday, after the president had condemned both nations on Tuesday, and specifically Israel, for what he claimed were initial breaches of the truce.