Israel and Iran seemed to honor the fragile ceasefire between them for a second day Wednesday and U.S. President Donald Trump asserted that American and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace.
Trump, who helped negotiate the ceasefire that took hold Tuesday on the 12th day of the war, told reporters at a NATO summit that he was not particularly interested in restarting negotiations with Iran, insisting that U.S. strikes had destroyed its nuclear program. Earlier in the day, an Iranian official questioned whether the United States could be trusted after its weekend attack.
“We may sign an agreement, I don’t know,” Trump said. “The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done.”
Iran has not acknowledged any talks taking place next week, though U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has said there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries. A sixth round of U.S.-Iran negotiations was scheduled for earlier this month in Oman but was canceled after Israel attacked Iran.
Earlier, Trump said the ceasefire was going “very well,” and added that Iran was “not going to have a bomb, and they’re not going to enrich.”
Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. In a vote underscoring the tough path ahead, its parliament agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. watchdog that has monitored the program for years.
Ahead of the vote, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized the IAEA for refusing “to even pretend to condemn the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities” that the U.S. carried out Sunday.
“For this reason, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran will suspend cooperation with the IAEA until security of nuclear facilities is ensured, and Iran’s peaceful nuclear program will move forward at a faster pace,” Qalibaf told lawmakers.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said he wrote to Iran to discuss resuming inspections of their nuclear facilities. Among other things, Iran claims to have moved its highly enriched uranium ahead of the U.S. strikes, and Grossi said his inspectors need to reassess the country’s stockpiles.
“We need to return,” he said. “We need to engage.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped Tehran would come back to the table. France was part of the 2015 deal with Iran that restricted its nuclear program, but the agreement began unraveling after Trump pulled the U.S. out in his first term. Macron spoke multiple times to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during the war.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi said Wednesday that Iran must quickly resume cooperation with international inspectors, telling French broadcaster France 2 that the IAEA had lost visibility over sensitive nuclear materials since the onset of hostilities.
Grossi said Iran is legally obligated to cooperate with the IAEA under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“During a war, inspections are not possible. But now that hostilities have ceased, and given the sensitivity of this material, I believe it is in everyone’s interest that we resume our activities as soon as possible,” he said.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.
Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged.
Questions over effectiveness of the US strikes
The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the U.S. and Israeli strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” It did not give evidence to back up its claim.
The U.S. strikes hit three Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump said “completely and fully obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. When asked about a U.S. intelligence report that found Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months, Trump scoffed and said it would at least take years to rebuild.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, confirmed that the strikes by American B-2 bombers using bunker-buster bombs had caused significant damage.
“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, refusing to go into detail.
He seemed to suggest Iran might not shut out IAEA inspectors for good, noting that the bill before parliament only talks of suspending work with the agency, not ending it. He also insisted Iran has the right to pursue a nuclear energy program.
“Iran is determined to preserve that right under any circumstances,” he said.
Witkoff said late Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that Israel and the U.S. had achieved their objective with “the total destruction of the enrichment capacity” in Iran, and Iran’s prerequisite for talks — that Israel end its campaign — had been fulfilled.
“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “No one’s shooting at each other. It’s over.”
Hopes for a long-term peace agreement
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the ceasefire agreement with Iran amounted to “quiet for quiet,” with no further understandings about Iran’s nuclear program going ahead.
Witkoff told Fox News that Trump is now looking to land “a comprehensive peace agreement that goes beyond even the ceasefire.”
“We’re already talking to each other, not just directly, but also through interlocutors,” Witkoff said, adding that the conversations were promising.
However, Baghaei, the Iranian spokesman, said Washington had “torpedoed diplomacy” with its attacks on nuclear sites, and that while Iran in principle was always open to talks, national security was the priority.
“We have to make sure whether the other parties are really serious when they’re talking about diplomacy, or is it again part of their tactics to make more problems for the region and for my country,” he said.
Grossi said Iran and the international community should seize the opportunity of the ceasefire for a long-term diplomatic solution.
“Out of the … bad things that military conflict brings, there’s also now a possibility, an opening,” he said. “We shouldn’t miss that opportunity.”
A rare video by Mossad
Israel revealed details of the intelligence and covert operations that it said allowed the country to effectively target Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and key facilities.
In a rare video released by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, chief David Barnea thanked the CIA for being a key partner, and his own agents for work over years to achieve what was “unimaginable at first.”
“Thanks to accurate intelligence, advanced technologies and operational capabilities beyond imagination, we helped the air force strike the Iranian nuclear project, establish aerial superiority in Iranian skies and reduce the missile threat,” the agency said in a Facebook post alongside the video.
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the military chief of staff, asserted that commandos had operated secretly “deep inside enemy territory” during the war.
Tehran on Tuesday put the death toll in Iran at 606, with 5,332 people wounded. The Washington-based Human Rights Activists group released figures Wednesday suggesting Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 1,054 and wounded 4,476.
The group, which has provided detailed casualty figures from multiple rounds of unrest in Iran, said 417 of those killed were civilians and 318 were security forces.
At least 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,000 wounded, according to officials.
In the past two weeks, Iran has executed six prisoners accused of spying for Israel, including three on Wednesday.
