Final battle damage assessment of US strikes on Iran will be key in US push for Iran nuclear deal

As the Trump administration looks to quickly pivot from military strikes to a diplomatic deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the final military and intelligence assessment on the recent US strikes will be critical in informing what the Trump administration needs to accomplish in future Iran negotiations.

As the Trump administration looks to quickly pivot from military strikes to a diplomatic deal on Iran’s nuclear program, the final military and intelligence assessment on the recent US strikes will be critical in informing what the Trump administration needs to accomplish in future Iran negotiations. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will need to use that final battle damage assessment – including a detailed summary of the facilities’ damage and the locale of the nuclear material – to help formulate the US strategy for diplomatic efforts to completely halt the regime’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon in the future, current and former US officials explained. “You’re not going to the negotiation assuming that the other side is going to tell you everything you need to know about the state of their program,” explained Pranay Vaddi, a former senior official for nonproliferation at the National Security Council. “We need to have a baseline that is established by the US intelligence community before that,” Vaddi added. “If the Trump administration is committed to some kind of deal still – which it makes statements on – they need to know what they were able to get through military action, compared to what they need to get through the diplomatic process.” President Donald Trump continues to claim that Iran’s nuclear program has been “fully obliterated,” which does not mirror an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, finding that the attack did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program. The early assessment has split lawmakers on the effectiveness of the strikes. And Trump’s absolutist pronouncements could also complicate Witkoff’s job, officials said. Even if the facilities themselves have been badly damaged, it does not mean that the nuclear program itself has been wholly destroyed. Prior to the US strikes, experts and former officials had expressed skepticism about the idea that the nuclear program could be militarily destroyed, noting that there would still be people with the knowledge to support it.