US President Donald Trump hailed the swift end to war between Iran and Israel and said Washington would likely seek a commitment from Tehran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks with Iranian officials next week.
Trump said his decision to join Israel’s attacks by targeting Iranian nuclear sites with huge bunker-busting bombs had ended the war, calling it “a victory for everybody”.
“It was very severe. It was obliteration,” he said, shrugging off an initial assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency that Iran’s path to building a nuclear weapon may have been set back only by months.
Read More: Iran’s parliament passes bill to halt cooperation with IAEA
Speaking in The Hague where he attended a NATO summit on Wednesday, he said he did not see Iran getting involved again in developing nuclear weapons. Tehran has always denied decades of accusations by Western leaders that it is seeking nuclear arms.
“We’re going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary,” Trump said.
Anxious Iranians and Israelis sought to resume normal life after the most intense confrontation ever between the two foes. Israel’s nuclear agency assessed the strikes had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years”. The White House also circulated the Israeli assessment, although Trump said he was not relying on Israeli intelligence.
He said he was confident Tehran would pursue a diplomatic path towards reconciliation. “I’ll tell you, the last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now. They want to recover,” he said.
If Iran tried to rebuild its nuclear programme, “We won’t let that happen. Number one, militarily we won’t,” he said, adding that he thought “we’ll end up having something of a relationship with Iran” to resolve the issue.
Also Read: US Intelligence report contradicts Trump’s claim on Iran nuclear strikes success
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, dismissed what he called the “hourglass approach” of assessing damage to Iran’s nuclear programme in terms of months needed to rebuild as besides the point for an issue that needed a long-term solution.
“In any case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” he said. His priority was returning international inspectors to Iranian nuclear sites, which he said was the only way to find out precisely what state they were in.
IRAN President hints at domestic reforms
Israel’s bombing campaign, launched with a surprise attack on June 13, wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military leadership and killed leading nuclear scientists. Iran responded with missiles that pierced Israel’s defences in large numbers for the first time.
Iranian authorities said 627 people were killed and nearly 5,000 injured in Iran, where the extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed because of tight restrictions on media. Twenty-eight people were killed in Israel.
Israel claimed to have achieved its goals of destroying Iran’s nuclear sites and missiles; Iran claimed to have forced the end of the war by penetrating Israeli defences.
Trump said both sides were exhausted but the conflict could restart. Israel’s demonstration that it could target Iran’s senior leadership seemingly at will poses perhaps the biggest challenge yet for Iran’s clerical rulers, at a critical juncture when they must find a successor for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, now 86 and in power for 36 years.
Read More: Fragile ceasefire holds with US-Iran talks dubbed ‘promising’
President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate elected last year in a challenge to years of dominance by hardliners, said it could result in reform.
“This war and the empathy that it fostered between the people and officials is an opportunity to change the outlook of management and the behaviour of officials so that they can create unity,” he said in a statement carried by state media.
Still, Iran’s authorities moved swiftly to demonstrate their control. The judiciary announced the execution of three men on Wednesday convicted of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an assassination. Iran had arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported.
During the war, both Netanyahu and Trump publicly suggested that it could end with the toppling of Iran’s entire system of clerical rule, established in its 1979 revolution. But after the ceasefire, Trump said he did not want to see “regime change” in Iran, which he said would bring chaos at a time when he wanted the situation to settle down.
Relief, Apprehension, Exhaustion
In both Iran and Israel, residents expressed relief at the end of the fighting, but also apprehension.
“We came back after the ceasefire was announced. People are relieved that the war has stopped, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about what comes next,” said Farah, 67, who returned to Tehran from Lavasan near the capital where she had fled to escape Israeli bombing.
Also Read: NATO allies agree to boost military budgets after Trump pressure
Her grandchildren were worried that the authorities would respond by imposing more severe enforcement of dress codes and other restrictions on social freedoms, she said by phone: “The world will move on and forget about the war – but we’re the ones who will live with its consequences.”
In Tel Aviv, Rony Hoter-Ishay Meyer, 38, said the war’s end brought mixed emotions – relief that children could return to school and normal life resume, but exhaustion from the stress.
“Those past two weeks were catastrophic in Israel and we are very much exhausted and we need to get back to our normal energy.”
