Trump downplays intel report, compares strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to Hiroshima, Nagasaki

President Trump on Wednesday downplayed a leaked intelligence report on the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, comparing them to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought World War II to an end.

"The intelligence was ... very inconclusive," Trump told reporters on Wednesday in The Hague while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Reuters reported.

"The intelligence says, 'We don't know, it could have been very severe.' That's what the intelligence says. So I guess that's correct, but I think we can take the 'we don't know'. It was very severe. It was obliteration," Trump added.

"I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war," he said.

Trump claimed that Iran's nuclear program had been set back "basically decades, because I don't think they'll ever do it again."

Multiple media outlets reported on Tuesday that the Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that the strikes had only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months and that Iran had moved much of its enriched uranium before the strikes.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday regarding the DIA report, "When you actually look at the report -- by the way, it was a top-secret report -- it was preliminary, it was low-confidence. This is a political motive here."

“Of course we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments,” he added, The Hill reported. “And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that those who shared the report had mischaracterized it: "This is the game they play."

Regarding the report, Trump said, “They really don’t know. I think Israel is gonna be telling us very soon because [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is going to have people involved in that whole situation.”

“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum that’s in this room. And not all of you are… CNN is scum. MSDNC [sic] is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick,” Trump added. “And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

Israeli intelligence services believe that the strikes from both the U.S. and Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities caused "very significant" damage, unnamed Israeli officials told Axios.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel has yet produced a final assessment of how far back the bombing campaign has set Iran's nuclear program, according to three officials.

"A professional battle damage assessment takes time," an Israeli official said, suggesting it was too early to draw the kinds of conclusions included in the DIA report.

"Israeli intelligence services haven't arrived at any bottom lines for now," the official added. "But we don't think there was any bug in the operation, and we have no indications the bunker-buster bombs didn't work. Nobody here is disappointed."

"The Iranians themselves still don't even have a clear idea what happened to some of their nuclear facilities," another Israeli official said.

"We doubt that these facilities can be activated any time in the near future," one Israeli official told the news outlet.

Two Israeli officials said that intelligence shows Iran's stockpile of 60% and 20% enriched uranium is buried under rubble at two of the nuclear sites, and it's unclear if Iran will be able to recover it in the near future.