President Trump doubled down on his claims that the U.S. strikes in Iran last weekend "obliterated" its key nuclear facilities, lashing out at reports of a leaked intel assessment, which stated that Iran's nuclear program had only been set back by "a few months."
Speaking to reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump said he was confident the conflict between Israel and Iran was over. The two sides agreed to a ceasefire suddenly, after Trump declared one on social media Monday night.
Trump said at the summit that he had plans to talk with Iran next week, but said he didn't think it was necessary to come to a deal with Iran over abandoning its nuclear ambitions.
"We may sign an agreement," he said, but later added "I don't think it's necessary," reiterating the success of the U.S. strikes.
But experts on the region and Iran's nuclear program say that regardless of the amount of damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities, deliberate negotiations leading to a lasting agreement are crucial. Otherwise, a resumption of the war – which could include the U.S. – seems inevitable.
"This ceasefire, in my view, is going to be very short lived for both the Israelis and the Americans, unless there is a very serious political strategy, and President Trump essentially takes that leap," says Ellie Geranmayeh, senior policy fellow and Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Dana Stroul, who was the Pentagon's top Middle East official between 2021 and 2023, said the need for negotiations as soon as possible is "absolutely critical."
"This is a very unusual way to approach a ceasefire," says Stroul, now research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "There's nothing written down, nothing articulated, no timeline and no identified mechanism for how to mediate accusations of cheating."
A "head-spinning" two weeks
Wednesday's comments from Trump were the latest in what Geranmayeh called a "head-spinning two-week period" between Israel, Iran and the U.S. that has left many watchers of the region struggling to catch up.
It began with planned nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, which had already gone several rounds but were canceled when Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran in mid-June. The talks had initially been going well, but had begun to stall in the more technical details.
The U.S. then struck multiple nuclear sites within Iran with massive bunker-buster bombs last weekend, as the only country in possession of both the weapons and the delivery system to make such a strike.
Since that strike, several Iranian officials have openly talked about continuing the country's nuclear program – which Iran maintains is peaceful, but which Israel says was aimed at building a nuclear bomb – particularly in regards to enriching uranium, a key component for a nuclear weapon.
"President Trump has to find a way in which to get back to the nuclear negotiating table as quickly as possible," says Vali Nasr, Iran specialist and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Nasr stressed that time is not on the side of the U.S. right now.
"The Iranians may already be busy building a bomb, having realized that they were just invaded by two nuclear armed countries, and that, ultimately, you know, the only choice to face such a threat is nuclear weapons," he says.
Iran can rebuild
Experts have long warned that attacking Iran could have the opposite effect to what its adversaries want – instead of deterring its nuclear ambitions, it could speed them up.
"I've been making this point for at least 30 years, that all that matters is reconstitution," says Kenneth Pollack, vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute, talking about the rebuilding of Iran's nuclear program.
Pollack says there simply isn't a way it can be curtailed through military action alone.
"No matter how many scientists the Israelis kill, they're not going to be able to assassinate Iran back to nuclear ignorance. The knowledge is just too widespread within the Iranian system," he says.
He points to the fact that there is still so much about Iran's nuclear program that is unknown, especially after the most recent hostilities, including where a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium might be.
Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, indicated on Monday that there's a chance it survived the attacks, having been moved by Iran ahead of time -- but said that the nuclear watchdog currently has no accounting of it.
Iran has limited its interaction with IAEA inspectors for several years, although they were still allowed to monitor declared nuclear sites. On Wednesday, Iran's parliament recommended a bill that effectively suspended cooperation with the agency. On Thursday, the country's Guardian Council fully approved it.
Iran has made clear that the suspension does not mean it will pull out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it will prevent IAEA inspections of Iran's bombed nuclear facilities.
"The Iranian regime has invested decades in its nuclear program and also an unparalleled amount of resources," says Stroul, of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "So to think that after less than two weeks, they are just going to take a knee and abandon their entire nuclear ambitions is likely a short sighted approach."
Talks won't be easy
Trump has signaled that U.S. and Iranian officials will be meeting next week.
Shira Efron, director of research at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, says this is good news, if true.
"An agreement would deliver something far more sustainable than the ceasefire that we have," she says. "The question is, what's going to come out of these talks? They can't be talks just for the sake of talks."
Those talks, if they happen, are almost certainly going to be complicated, given the extremely technical nature of the nuclear issue, and the hardened positions on both sides.
"This is the real test for the art of the deal, right?" says Nasr, of Johns Hopkins. "Do you actually have the diplomats with the authority to negotiate, to do the heavy lifting? Do you have the right team to do that? It's not only intention, it's the capacity to deliver."
Geranmayeh, who consulted during the diplomatic track that led to the 2015 nuclear deal under Obama, says in some ways that deal helped lay a pathway for talks today. But without international inspectors having access to Iranian facilities, she says it would be hard to know what exactly to negotiate about now.
"Even though we basically know what the solutions are and how you can put the Rubik's Cube back together, the technical side has become more difficult," Geranmayeh says.
Like putting a Rubik's Cube back together blindfolded, she says.
Copyright 2025 NPR