Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not hold back Thursday morning, slamming the legacy media during a fiery Pentagon press conference. He said their hatred for President Donald Trump was driving their coverage of last weekend’s U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Because you cheer against Trump so hard, in your DNA and in your blood, cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy” of the strikes.
The Trump administration is fighting back hard against the “fake news” media following CNN’s reckless and misleading report late Tuesday that claimed the U.S. strikes on three of Iran’s key nuclear sites only set the theocratic regime’s nuclear program back by a few months. Anonymous officials had leaked a preliminary “low confidence” assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency to CNN reporters.
Sources told The New York Post that the DIA assessment, which had been labeled “top secret,” was “compiled on Sunday without input from other intelligence agencies. … That suggests the report authors did not use CIA or other assets inside Iran to verify the extent of the damage nor rely on audio or online communications that may have been intercepted by the National Security Agency.”
But the report’s glaring limitations didn’t stop CNN from breathlessly presenting it as fact. They had a narrative to push — undermining the Trump administration — and the DIA assessment fit it perfectly.
The White House has launched an investigation into the source(s) of the leak to CNN reporters. The administration also plans to limit its sharing of classified information with Congress.
After rebuking the legacy media for their rogue journalism, Hegseth reaffirmed what he and Trump had stated on Sunday: the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He shared a lengthy list of other more reliable assessments that suggested the sites had sustained serious damage.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told Radio France Internationale on Thursday that Iran’s nuclear program has “suffered enormous damage.” Specifically, Grossi said that the centrifuges at the Fordow site “are no longer operational.”
He explained, “We can’t fully assess, and no one can say exactly what the extent of the damage is. But we already know that, given the power of those weapons and the technical characteristics of a centrifuge, we know that these centrifuges are no longer operational. These are machines with delicate positioning—there are rotors, there are parts—so the damage must have been total.”
Grossi stressed that while the damage was extremely significant at “the three major sites: Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow, where Iran had concentrated most of its uranium enrichment and conversion activities,” there are some sites that have not been hit.
Additionally, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, “Yes, our nuclear installations have been badly damaged — that’s for sure — because it has come under repeated attacks by Israeli and American aggressors.”
A report from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security says the Israeli and U.S. attacks “have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe stated that new intelligence indicates Iran’s nuclear program was “severely damaged” and that key facilities were “destroyed” and would require years to rebuild.
Israeli officials believe the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan is “very significant” and that the total damage from Israeli and U.S. strikes has set back the Iranian nuclear program by two years.
Basically, the only person to agree with CNN’s assessment is Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In a video message released on Thursday, he claimed the U.S. strikes had “no major effect” on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Strangely, Khamenei also declared victory in the war with Israel. He said, “America’s regime got involved in a direct war because it felt that if it didn’t, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed. But there was no achievement from this war. Here the Islamic Republic was the victor and, rather, we delivered a hard slap to America’s face.”
It sure doesn’t look like victory.
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