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The fallout from President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities continued to dog the president at this week’s NATO summit in the Netherlands. The current ceasefire between Israel and Iran doesn’t seem totally stable, and a leaked Department of Defense intelligence report indicates the strikes may have been far less effective than the president and the White House are claiming.
On Tuesday, several outlets reported that an early intelligence assessment found that Saturday’s strikes against three of Iran’s nuclear facilities — including its central base in Fordow — only partially damaged the targets, and had likely only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few months.
Trump has forcefully insisted that the bases had been “obliterated” by the strike, and the White House and other administration officials tried to dismiss the Pentagon intelligence on Tuesday. Trump repeatedly doubled down while in the Netherlands for the NATO meeting, a critical gathering of European leaders amidst ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
In a Truth Social post written Tuesday evening, Trump wrote: “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”
During a press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on Wednesday, Trump complained to reporters that CNN and The New York Times — the first outlets to report on the DOD intelligence assessment — were “fake news” and had “[made] up a phony story to get some hits.”
“They’re both disgusting, really horrible groups of people,” Trump added.
In a separate solo presser, the president claimed multiple times that the facilities had been “obliterated,” by the strikes and that any reports to the contrary were false.
“We destroyed the nuclear. I said, Iran will not have nuclear weapons. Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come,” he said at one point. The president claimed that Iran had directly confirmed the destruction of the facilities, and the White House issued a press release citing a statement from Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, who said that Iran’s “nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.”
The extent of the damage remains unclear, and the intelligence report leaked to news outlets conceded that the striked had collapsed entrances to the facilities and potentially crippled electrical systems. However, Fordow and other facilities are buried deep underground, and the condition of the primary structures have not been ascertained. Iran also reportedly moved uranium from the facilities ahead of the strike. Trump denied this, as well, claiming the sites were hit “so hard and so fast that they didn’t get to move.”
Trump bashed the media for writing negative stories, but didn’t deny the existence of the intelligence report, or what it contained.
“It’s been obliterated,” Trump said in response to a reporter asking about the strikes, before admitting that it’s only been “a few days,” and the only assessments that have been done are based on initial intelligence and satellite imagery. “It could be severe or maybe it’s not,” Trump said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth then jumped in to accuse members of the media of not caring “what the troops think,” and working to hurt Trump’s agenda. Hegseth insisted that the nuclear program had been “obliterated,” and called the leaked report “low confidence.” Hegseth also admitted that the majority of the evidence related to the effectiveness of the strike was buried deep underground, and that if someone wants “to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow you better get a big shovel and go really deep.”
Shortly before the presser, Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense was conducting “a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments.”
Trump continued ranting on Truth Social later on Wednesday. “We just caught the Failing New York Times, working with Fake News CNN, cheating again!” he wrote. “They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did, and they were wrong in doing so. These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE. You would think they would be proud of the great success we had, instead of trying to always make our Country look bad. TOTAL OBLITERATION!”
He later attacked CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, calling for her to “be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog,’” alleging she lied about the intelligence report.
CNN responded with a statement making clear that they “100%” stand by Bertrand and her colleagues’ reporting.
