Claiming that the Israel-Iran ceasefire seems to be holding on the second day, US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he is confident that the conflict between Israel and Iran is over because they are “both tired and exhausted”.
Talking to the media during the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump said, “They have fought a hell of a war, very hard. I think the war ended, actually, when we hit the various nuclear sites with planes.”
While Israel has said that Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by “many years” after US and Israeli strikes following a leaked US intelligence report that said the attack only set back Iran’s plans by a few months, Trump assailed the preliminary intelligence report and blamed the news media for calling into question the effectiveness of the strikes.
“All of the nuclear stuff is down there in the tunnels of nuclear facilities,” Trump said, on the face of it rejecting the argument that nuclear material was moved out of the target sites, especially Isfahan, before the US struck the facilities with so-called bunker-busting bombs over the weekend.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the leaked US intelligence report is “preliminary and low confidence” as Trump administration officials claimed that on the contrary, the American strikes had dealt a fatal blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Explaining why he thought the Iranian nuclear effort had been set back for years rather than months, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said a “conversion facility” at Isfahan was destroyed, robbing Iran of equipment that is key to producing a nuclear weapon. The comments by President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the NATO summit were the latest in an effort to portray the 12-day war between Iran and Israel as a success.
Iranian Parliament votes against IAEA
Meanwhile, the Iranian Parliament voted almost unanimously on Wednesday to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian state TV reported. The move comes a day after a ceasefire deal between Iran and Israel. If it comes into effect, the legislation would make any external oversight of Iran’s nuclear program much more difficult. While Iran’s Parliament can pass legislations, the final decision on any security-related matter would ultimately be taken by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
China hopes for ‘lasting, effective’ ceasefire
China, a close partner of Iran, said it hoped a “lasting and effective ceasefire could be achieved to promote the realisation of peace and stability in the Middle East”. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Wednesday that China was “willing to maintain friendly cooperation with Iran to benefit the two peoples and inject positive factors to safeguard peace and stability in the Middle East”.
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