US President Donald Trump on Tuesday expressed frustration with Iran and Israel, saying that they had fought “for so long and so hard” that they do not know what they are doing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had brought Iran’s nuclear program “to ruin,” while Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmail Baghaei said US strikes on Sunday had caused significant damage to them, although a US intelligence report found that the program had been set back only a few months.
“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Baghaei said yesterday, according to an al-Jazeera report.
Photo: AFP
The report issued on Monday by the US Defense Intelligence Agency was described to reporters by two people who were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.”
After the truce was supposed to take effect, Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace, while it struck targets in Iran, although Netanyahu’s office said he held off on tougher strikes after speaking to Trump.
Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a NATO summit that, in his view, both sides had contravened the nascent ceasefire agreement.
He said both sides had violated the agreement and used an expletive to hammer home his point.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” he said.
He later said that the deal was saved.
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In Tehran yesterday, Iranian lawmakers voted in favor of suspending cooperation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog, state TV reported.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency, which refused to even marginally condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, put its international credibility up for auction,” Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, according to state TV.
The decision still requires the approval of the Guardian Council, a body empowered to vet legislation.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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