The ceasefire brokered by United States President Donald Trump between Iran and Israel appeared to be holding on Wednesday, June 25, just a day after both nations indicated that their aerial conflict had come to a halt.
Both sides declared victory on Tuesday following 12 days of conflict, during which the US intervened with airstrikes in support of Israel, targeting Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said late Tuesday that discussions between the United States and Iran were ‘promising,’ expressing optimism that a long-term peace agreement could be reached.
“We are already talking to each other, not just directly but also through interlocutors. I think that the conversations are promising. We are hopeful that we can have a long-term peace agreement,” Witkoff said.
“Now it’s for us to sit down with the Iranians and get to a comprehensive peace agreement, and I am very confident that we are going to achieve that,” he added.
Over the weekend, Trump claimed that US stealth bombers had ‘obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. However, Iran has maintained that its uranium enrichment efforts were solely for civilian purposes.
The ICIR reports that Trump’s claim was reportedly contradicted by an initial assessment from one of his administration’s intelligence agencies, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
One source stated that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had not been destroyed, and that much of the country’s nuclear programme was located deep underground.
The White House dismissed the intelligence assessment as “flat out wrong.”
According to the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the strikes blocked the entrances to two facilities but failed to collapse the underground structures, one source familiar with the findings said.
A Washington Post report said some centrifuges remained intact, citing an anonymous source familiar with the report.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration informed the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday that its weekend airstrikes had degraded Iran’s nuclear programme, falling short of Trump’s claim that the facilities had been ‘obliterated.’
Similarly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that the attack had removed the nuclear threat against Israel, and he was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its nuclear weapons programme.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues.