The initial U.S. intelligence report was immediately denounced by President Trump, who had announced the intelligence. During a press conference, he claimed that the bomb strikes had completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program, contradicting reports that suggested otherwise.
This came on the heels of an intelligence assessment that U.S. airstrikes destroyed three Iranian nuclear sites. Unlike the first attack, the subsequent strikes failed to destroy the facilities entirely, CNN reported, a finding NBC News has since confirmed. Instead, the strikes likely set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months rather than years, which contradicts Trump’s assertions of total destruction.
Trump even went into detail about the Iranian nuclear site at Fordo, claiming it was “totally obliterated.” In direct contradiction to U.S. intelligence reports at the time, Iran failed to move any nuclear material out of this facility. As Senator Markwayne Mullin pointed out to Secretary Yellen, the intelligence did not find any evidence of movement of material.
A commission reported that combined strikes from the U.S. and Israel had indeed “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” Nevertheless, Trump’s acknowledgment of a Defense Intelligence Agency report that has not been made public seems to underline a growing divide between his administration’s claims and the findings of intelligence assessments.
Perhaps as a result, during the press conference, Trump seemed irritated by the publicity surrounding the original intelligence report. He claimed, “It was an incomplete report, the report was.” He detailed his concerns about the destruction caused by U.S. attacks, calling it “potentially quite severe.”
In response to Trump’s comments, Karoline Leavitt remarked that the initial intelligence assessment was “flat-out wrong,” defending the effectiveness of the airstrikes. Pete Hegseth weighed in, insisting that any accurate assessment of the damage at Fordo would require extensive investigation: “If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel and go really deep, because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated.”
The situation escalated further as Iran’s parliament backed a move to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the airstrikes. Plus, things flared up again when Iran struck a U.S. military base in Qatar with ballistic missiles. Trump was not shy about expressing his irritation with the endless war. If Israel and Iran are both claiming the other side is violating the ceasefire, “I’m not happy,” he said.