Updated June 25, 2025 at 9:23 AM CDT
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At a press conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday morning, President Trump insisted that his strikes had heavily damaged Iran's nuclear operation, despite a U.S. intelligence report that says otherwise.
The press conference comes as the world watches to see whether a ceasefire between Israel and Iran will endure. Citing that ceasefire, Trump compared his bombings to the nuclear bombs that helped end World War II.
"It was so bad that they ended the war. It ended the war," he said. "Somebody said, in a certain way, that it was so devastating, actually, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war, too. This ended a war in a different way, but it was so devastating."
Trump traveled to the summit the morning after announcing that ceasefire, which came days after the United States joined Israel's attacks on key Iranian nuclear facilities. An early classified U.S. intelligence assessment said the bombs caused only limited damage, setting Tehran's nuclear program back "a few months."
The White House has dismissed that assessment. At the press conference, Trump cited a statement from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which said that U.S. strikes had "set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years."
At NATO, allies agreed to commit 5% of their GDP to defense spending by 2035, up from 2%. Trump has long called for allies to boost their spending, saying that the United States was paying more than its fair share. The U.S. contributes about 3.5% of its GDP to NATO.
But on his way to the summit, Trump told reporters that the new goal wouldn't apply to U.S. spending. "They're in Europe. We're not," he said. And he also expressed some ambivalence to Article 5, the mutual defense clause in the NATO treaty that says an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, adding to long-held fears among European allies that Trump would not back them in the event of an attack.
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