The “very grave and imminent” threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons programme was hit by US airstrikes, Britain said on Wednesday.
Defence Secretary John Healey said Iran must now be persuaded to seize a diplomatic path, rather than risk further attacks, to ensure it abandons its nuclear arms ambitions.
However, Donald Trump doubled down in his row with US intelligence and claimed that American airstrikes had set back Iran’s nuclear weapons programme by “decades”.
Earlier, he had angrily rejected a leaked intelligence report which said the US strike on Iran only set the country’s nuclear weapons programme back by months.
But his claim appeared to be contradicted by an initial report by one of his administration’s intelligence agencies, according to US media outlets.
Trump, speaking at a Nato summit in The Hague, Netherlands, was dismissive of the reports of the intelligence analysis.
Asked how long he thinks the Iranian nuclear programme has been set back, he said: ."I think basically decades.
"I think they've had it, they just went through hell... the last thing they want to do is enrich."
"That hit ended the war.”
Mr Healey was reluctant to be drawn into the extraordinary row, of a US president denouncing a report of the US intelligence findings as “fake news”.
But he appeared to suggest that any impact of the American airstrikes was short-term.
He told BBC radio: “The US took their decision, we now need to deal with the situation we are in and we are in new circumstances in which the very grave, imminent threat of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon has been alleviated.”
CNN had earlier reported that it had been briefed on an early US intelligence assessment which indicated that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed in the weekend strike.
One person said to have been briefed on the intelligence said the centrifuges were largely “intact”, CNN said.
It reported another source saying the intelligence has assessed the enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the attack.
“So the (Defense Intelligence Agency) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” the source added.
According to the assessment produced by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the strikes reportedly sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but did not collapse underground buildings.
The New York Times also ran a report on the leaked intelligence.
The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.”
In a scathing post on his Truth Social platform, Trump lashed out at the US media reports.
“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,” he wrote.
“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, called reporting on the effectiveness of the strikes, which targeted Iran’s heavily-fortified Fordow nuclear site as well as other facilities, as “preposterous”.
He posted on social media: “We put 12 bunker buster bombs on Fordow. There’s no doubt that it breached the canopy...and there’s no doubt that it was OBLITERATED. So, the reporting out there that in some way suggests that we did not achieve the objective is just completely preposterous!”
Tensions between Israel and Iran are expected to dominate discussions among world leaders at the Nato summit on Wednesday amid a fragile ceasefire.
Trump and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are among those in The Hague for a gathering of the alliance.
After the ceasefire was initially struck early on Tuesday, Israel claimed Iran had violated the deal by carrying out strikes after it came into force.
Trump called for Israel to withdraw its warplanes, and claimed both it and Iran “don’t know what the f*** they’re doing” as he departed for the summit in the Netherlands.
The Foreign Office confirmed the plane had left Israel and said further flights would be considered depending on demand.
