President Donald Trump and other administration officials denied a report that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by several months, continuing to insist the nuclear sites were “completely destroyed” and “obliterated.”

CNN reported on Tuesday night that an early intelligence assessment by the Pentagon found that the core components of Iran’s nuclear program were still intact and the regime could continue seeking a nuclear bomb, according to seven people briefed on the matter. 

Speaking from the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump told reporters, “That was a perfect operation. … And also, and nobody’s talking about this, we shot 30 Tomahawks from submarines … and every one of those Tomahawks hit within a foot of where they were supposed to hit. Took out a lot of buildings that Israel wasn’t able to get. … This was a devastating attack and it knocked them for a loop. And, you know, if it didn’t, they wouldn’t have settled. … If that thing wasn’t devastated, they never would have settled.”

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing that ended that war,” he said later. “This ended that with the war. If we didn’t take that out, they’d be fighting right now.”

“It was obliteration,” he said of the U.S. strikes in Iran. “And you’ll see that, and it’s going to come out. Israel is doing a report on it, I understand. … You know, they have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration.”

“I don’t think they’ll ever do it again,” Trump continued, referring to Iran’s enrichment of uranium. “They just went through hell. I think they’ve had it. The last thing they want to do is enrich.” 

The president also posted on Truth Social earlier, saying, “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. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking to Fox News shortly after the CNN report was released, called the leak “treasonous” and said, “There is no doubt that it [Iran’s nuclear program] was obliterated. So the reporting out there that in some ways suggests that we didn’t achieve the objective is just completely preposterous.” He said it was “not even conceivable” that Iran could still achieve a nuclear weapon within months.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly denied the report but offered a more measured assessment of Iranian nuclear capabilities, telling Politico on the sidelines of the NATO Summit on Wednesday that, “The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action. That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it.” 

White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “This alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. … Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

A CNN spokesperson said in a statement to Jewish Insider, “CNN stands by our thorough reporting on an early intelligence assessment of the recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which has since been confirmed by other news organizations. The White House has acknowledged the existence of the assessment, and their statement is included in our story.”

David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on the Iranian nuclear program, called the report “hard to believe” and “misleading.” Among other analyses, he said Iran has “likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Moreover, there has been considerable damage to Iran’s ability to build the nuclear weapon itself.”