The President IS now going to great lengths to try and prove his untrue statement was ‘Right’…
It WAS NOT….
President Trump is going to extraordinary lengths to defend his claim that U.S. airstrikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, determined to cement the operation as a defining victory of his presidency.
Why it matters: Trump has staked his credibility — and major parts of his foreign policy legacy — on the success of Saturday’s military intervention, which punctuated decades of U.S. debate over the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
- He has treated the leak of an initial Pentagon battle damage assessment as an act of sabotage, launching an aggressive campaign to discredit the report as preliminary, inaccurate and already outdated.
- Critics have accused Trump of politicizing intelligence and pressuring officials to make an assessment that may be premature — or at least more nuanced than the president claims.
Driving the news: Trump announced that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and top Pentagon officials will hold a “major news conference” at 8 a.m. ET Thursday to defend the “Great American Pilots” who carried out “a perfect mission.”
- The administration has accused the media of unpatriotic behavior for reporting skeptically on the Iran strike, even while acknowledging the initial assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency was real.
- The FBI has launched an investigation into the breach, and the administration plans to limit sharing classified information with Congress to crack down on leakers, as Axios first reported.
- At Trump’s NATO press conference in the Netherlands, he publicly reprimanded the analysts who prepared the report — claiming it “wasn’t finished” and should have been withheld until they actually “knew the answer.”
Zoom in: The messaging campaign has become a whole-of-government priority.
- Hegseth and national security adviser Marco Rubio stepped forward at NATO to denounce attempts by leakers to “spin” the intelligence, stressing that the early assessment was labeled “low confidence.”
- Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — whom Trump criticized last week over her Iran assessment to Congress — said Wednesday that “new intelligence confirms” that Iran’s nuclear facilities have been “destroyed” and will take “years” to rebuild.
- CIA Director John Ratcliffe cited a new “body of credible intelligence,” including “historically reliable” sources and methods, that shows Iran’s nuclear program has been “severely damaged.”
The intrigue: Trump has solicited backup from Israel — and even pointed to statements from Iran — to validate his narrative and undercut the Pentagon’s early intelligence.
- While Trump spoke at NATO, the White House circulated a short statement attributed to the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that said the U.S. strike on Iran’s fortified nuclear facility in Fordow “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”
- It was highly unusual for the White House to release a statement on behalf of an Israeli security agency — and it took another 30 minutes before the Israeli prime minister’s office distributed it to the press….
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asserted that U.S. strikes on Iran were effective in setting back the country’s nuclear capabilities, following reports that the attack set their program back only by a few months.
“New intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” Gabbard wrote on the social platform X…..
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On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have not yet been briefed on the strikes, the conflicting messages from the administration have sparked a combination of confusion about the effectiveness of the attacks and new anxieties that Trump might pursue further intervention if the initial mission is found to have fallen short of objectives.
“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked. “There apparently are reasons to believe that that was a blatant misrepresentation made by Donald Trump to the American people.”…
U.S. Did Not Use Bunker Busters on Key Iran Nuclear Site
“The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran’s largest nuclear sites last weekend because the site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective, the U.S. top general told senators during a briefing on Thursday,” CNN reports.