President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the media collaborated to “demean” the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend following a leaked damage assessment of the attack.
Earlier in the day, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the leaked damage report, which alleged the strikes merely set the Iranian nuclear program back by months, was an attempt to “undermine” Trump. Both Hegseth and Trump had insisted the sites were “obliterated.”
“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,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”
“Based on everything we’ve seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Hegseth said in a statement addressing the reporting. Trump shared Hegseth’s statement on Truth Social.
“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target — and worked perfectly,” he added. “The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”
Vice President JD Vance also shared a Defense Department official’s assessment that the sites had been “obliterated.”
An assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence wing, surveyed the damage from the United States’s B-2 strikes with 30,000-pound bunker-buster munitions and smaller follow-up strikes from Israel’s air force, sources told several outlets. Based on information gathered from a U.S. Central Command assessment, the DIA estimated that the strikes on the nuclear facilities, particularly the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, set Iran’s nuclear program back by less than six months.
Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy to the Middle East, called the report’s leak “treasonous.”
“Leaking that type of information, whatever the information, whatever side it comes out on, is outrageous,” he said in a Fox News interview. “It’s treasonous. So it ought to be investigated, and whoever did it, whoever is responsible for it, should be held accountable.”
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said the strikes were not meant to “completely destroy” the facilities.
“I’ve been briefed on this plan in the past, and it was never meant to completely destroy the nuclear facilities but rather cause significant damage,” he told CNN. “But it was always known to be a temporary setback.”
US STRIKES ONLY SET IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM BACK BY MONTHS, INTELLIGENCE SUGGESTS
Trump announced a ceasefire on Monday evening between Israel and Iran, but he expressed frustration when it appeared to be broken shortly after. It has since held up.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” Trump said as he left the White House for a NATO summit.