In the wake of US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, former President Donald Trump has maintained a defiant and triumphant tone, insisting that the mission was one of the most decisive military operations in American history.
Trump, in multiple public statements and social media posts, declared that the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program and rendered the country incapable of reviving its atomic ambitions.
Speaking to reporters and posting emphatically on Truth Social, Trump praised the performance of the B-2 stealth bombers and the military personnel involved in the precision strikes, which he said “demolished” the underground facilities where Iran’s nuclear operations were housed.
“That place is under a rock. That place is demolished.
The B-2 pilots did their job better than anybody could have imagined… That place is gone,” Trump stated, adding that Iran would “never be able to rebuild its nuclear facilities.”
Trump emphasized that the deployment of 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs had left Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in ruins, claiming that the damage was irreversible and decisive.
He dismissed skepticism from the press and intelligence circles as politically motivated attacks.
“Fake news CNN, together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history,” Trump posted.
“The nuclear sites in Iran have been destroyed! Both The Times and CNN are getting slammed by the public!”
Despite Trump’s bold assertions, a preliminary assessment from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) presents a more measured view.
According to a Reuters report citing three sources familiar with the intelligence analysis, the strikes inflicted significant damage but stopped short of achieving destruction.
The DIA found that while entrances to two of the three targeted facilities were sealed off, the underground structures themselves—where much of the nuclear equipment is located—remained largely intact.
One source indicated that Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium were not eliminated and estimated that the country’s nuclear program may have been delayed by no more than one to two months.
The same report noted that some centrifuges—the machines used to enrich uranium—had survived the bombing.
In response to the assessment, the White House dismissed the findings as “flat out wrong,” reinforcing Trump’s claims and casting doubt on the intelligence community’s analysis.
Administration officials have maintained that the strikes delivered a strategic blow to Iran’s nuclear capabilities and that any downplaying of their impact is either misinformation or an attempt to undercut Trump’s foreign policy legacy.
In a separate briefing to the United Nations Security Council, the Trump administration described the strikes as having “degraded” Iran’s nuclear capacity, further supporting the President’s narrative that the operation achieved its military objectives.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime critic of Iran’s nuclear program, echoed Trump’s sentiments.
He hailed the strikes as having “removed the threat of nuclear annihilation,” and reaffirmed his commitment to preventing Tehran from reviving its weapons program.
While the long-term impact of the strikes remains under scrutiny, Trump continues to frame the operation as a masterstroke in US military strategy—a definitive move that, in his words, “changed the course of history” and demonstrated American strength on the global stage.