Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, suggested the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are “not necessarily the death blow” that President Trump claimed when he announced the military action Saturday evening.
In an interview on MSNBC, Smith questioned Trump’s assessment that the three Iranian nuclear sites were “totally obliterated” by the strikes and raised the possibility that the U.S. is unaware of more sites.
“President Trump, in his typical fashion, you know, claims facts not in evidence, saying we totally obliterated their whole program,” Smith said. “Nobody knows that right now. Maybe. Maybe not. We do not know how many of these centrifuges were destroyed.”
He also said the U.S. “can’t be 100 percent sure that we knew about all of Iran’s centrifuges,” noting the U.S. didn’t know about Iran’s Fordow nuclear site — one of the three that the U.S. bombed on Saturday — for a decade before it was discovered.
And Smith questioned “how quickly” Iran could reconstitute its nuclear program, adding, “It sadly does not take that long to build centrifuges once you know how.”
“So it’s not necessarily the death blow to Iran’s nuclear program. We’re still going to have to negotiate with them at some point,” he said. “So, you know, this assumption that their nuclear program is gone and they’ll never be able to build it is simply wrong at this point.”
The announcement of U.S. action against Iran came two days after the White House said Trump would decide whether to get involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel “in the next two weeks” to give a window for negotiations.
White House sources indicated the U.S. had given Israel a heads up before it struck the Iranian sites and that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke after the strikes.
The strikes marked a significant entrance by the U.S. into a conflict between Israel and Iran that had been underway for more than a week. They also indicated a shift by Trump, who said he was seeking a diplomatic solution with Iran and sent U.S. officials to make a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program.
Smith released a statement on Saturday condemning “in the strongest terms” Trump’s decision to order U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, criticizing the president for acting without congressional approval and without specifying “clear objectives for these actions.”
“There are no guarantees that it will eliminate the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon or how long it might set their program back,” Smith said in the statement.
He said negotiating a nuclear deal is “the way to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and to protect American service members.”
“The path that the President has chosen risks unleashing a wider war in the region that is both incredibly unpredictable and treacherous and that threatens the safety and security of the United States, Israel, and ultimately the world,” Smith added in the statement.