President Donald Trump rejected a plan for further, more comprehensive U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a new report states.
The president reportedly halted the new wave of airstrikes after an assessment found that two of the three sites targeted in last month’s cruise-missile and bunker-buster bombs attack sustained only minimal damage, according to five current and former officials cited by NBC News.
The sources said that U.S. Central Command had drafted a far more expansive plan to strike Iran that included targeting three additional sites than those that took place in Operation Midnight Hammer between June 21 and 22.
The strikes would have unfolded over several weeks, rather than in a single night, sources said.
“We were willing to go all the way in our options, but the president did not want to,” one person with knowledge of the plan said.
Trump allegedly rejected the plan because it conflicted with his America First agenda, favored by high-profile conservative figures such as Tucker Carlson, which involves pulling the U.S. out of foreign wars and a potential for higher casualties on both sides, two sources said.
The report was commissioned as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to assess the status of Iran’s nuclear program, after the president claimed the U.S. military “obliterated” uranium enrichment sites Fordo and Natanz and the major research facility at Isfahan.
Some U.S. lawmakers, Defense Department officials, and allied countries were briefed on the report in recent days, four of the sources said.
It stated that one of the nuclear facilities struck by U.S. strikes last month was mostly destroyed, significantly delaying operations there.
However, two others may have been damaged to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume within the next several months, the sources briefed on the report said.
The report appears at odds with the president’s claims, who just hours after a fleet of U.S. B-2 stealth bombers touched down in Missouri on June 22, returning from Iran, the president touted the “Monumental Damage” that was “done to all Nuclear sites.”
The most significant damage, he said, took place “far below ground level,” before adding: “Bullseye!!!”
This is a breaking story. More to follow.
