By Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump told Congress this week that the Iranian sites bombed by the U.S. housed a “nuclear weapons development program,” even though U.S. spy agencies have said no such program existed.
Trump’s claim raised questions whether U.S. intelligence backed up his decision to order the strikes on Iran on Sunday.
The Republican president made the assertion in a letter dated Monday to House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a key ally, and it was posted on the White House’s website.
“United States forces conducted a precision strike against three nuclear facilities in Iran used by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its nuclear weapons development program,” Trump wrote.
The most recent U.S. assessment, presented to Congress in March by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had not ordered the restarting of a nuclear-weapons effort shuttered in 2003.
A source with access to U.S. intelligence reports told Reuters last week that the March assessment had not changed.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful uses.
President George Bush justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by saying intelligence showed the country had weapons of mass destruction. This was later discredited and prompted a political backlash.
Trump first cast doubt on intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program last week, when he repudiated the assessment that Gabbard delivered to Congress.
“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump told reporters, referring to a nuclear weapon.
Gabbard herself on Friday disputed media accounts of her March testimony, saying on X that U.S. intelligence showed Iran could make a nuclear weapon “in weeks to months” if it chose.
According to unclassified U.S. intelligence reports compiled before the strikes, Iran closed a nuclear weapons program in 2003 – a conclusion shared by the U.N. nuclear watchdog – and has not mastered all of the technologies required. But Tehran does have the expertise to build a warhead at some point, according to the reports.
The U.S. attacked three Iranian nuclear sites — Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow — on Sunday. It hit deeply buried Fordow,
where advanced centrifuges could produce low-enriched uranium for nuclear reactor fuel and highly enriched uranium for warheads, with “bunker busting” bombs.
Trump and other top officials said the sites were obliterated. But a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment found the attack set back Tehran’s program by only months, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
A U.S. official who read the assessment said it contained a number of caveats and a more refined report was expected in the coming days and weeks.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and Cynthia Osterman)
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