Trump compares US strikes in Iran to Hiroshima, Nagasaki

Donald Trump on Wednesday compared the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities to the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Criticizing American media that questioned the extent of the damage caused by the bombs dropped last weekend on three key sites in Iran, the American president stated, "It was so strong that it ended the war" between Iran and Israel.

"Someone said that, in a certain way, it was so devastating that you can think about Hiroshima, you can think about Nagasaki," he added during a press conference following the NATO summit in The Hague. "It had also ended a war; this ended a war in another way, but it was so devastating," he said.

In the morning, Trump explained that he did not want "to use the example of Hiroshima" or "of Nagasaki," while asserting that it was "fundamentally the same thing."

The American bombings of these two Japanese cities took place 80 years ago, on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. The atomic bombs caused about 214,000 deaths and hastened Japan's surrender and the end of World War II.

To strike a blow to the Iranian nuclear program, with the stated goal of preventing Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb itself, Washington used a powerful bunker-buster bomb, named GBU-57, which is, however, a conventional weapon.