President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States will hold nuclear talks with Iran next week, following devastating U.S. air strikes that intelligence officials say “severely damaged” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
What Happened: Speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, Trump credited Sunday’s bunker-busting bomb attacks with bringing a swift resolution to the 12-day Israel-Iran conflict, Reuters reported. “It was very severe. It was obliteration,” Trump said, dismissing Defense Intelligence Agency assessments that Iran’s nuclear program may only be delayed by months.
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe confirmed the strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear program, citing “credible evidence” that key facilities were destroyed and would require years to rebuild. Israel’s nuclear agency assessed that the damage has set back Iran’s weapons development “by many years.”
The weekend operation involved seven B-2 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman Corp. targeting facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Mike Gallagher, defense chief at Palantir Technologies Inc., said the strikes demonstrated capabilities “no other country in the world” possesses.
Why It Matters: Markets responded positively to ceasefire prospects. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called the Iran-Israel ceasefire “the most bullish outcome” for Wall Street, predicting 2-3% market gains. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:SPY) and Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) traded higher in the regular session on Wednesday.
Trump said he’s confident that Iran will pursue diplomatic reconciliation, although he provided no details on the venue or participants for next week’s talks. “I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” Trump said, referring to uranium enrichment activities.
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