Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) dismissed a leak regarding the strikes President Donald Trump ordered against three of Iran’s nuclear sites.
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s early assessment of the strike’s damage was leaked this week, including its conclusion that less damage was inflicted than Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly claimed. These strikes targeted the Fordow fuel enrichment plant and the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities over the weekend. Trump said at the time that the three sites were “totally obliterated” by 14 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs and 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles.
“I don’t know the motivations behind that leak. I find the leak highly dubious,” Cruz said on Fox News’s The Faulkner Focus Wednesday. “At the end of the day, we dropped a total of 14 bunker-buster bombs; each one of those is 30,000 pounds of explosives. They do devastating damage. They are the biggest non-nuclear bombs we have, and that effect on the face of it is going to be devastating. They were precise; they hit their targets.”
Hegseth confirmed that his department and the FBI will investigate the leak. The secretary denied any disparity between the assessment and his public analysis of the strike and continued to call the mission an “overwhelming success.”
While Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) had teased a classified briefing on the matter on Tuesday, Cruz explained that it did not take place and was rescheduled for later in the week.
JOHN THUNE SAYS CRITICS OF IRAN STRIKES ARE ‘ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY’
“I’m sure we’re gonna ask in the classified setting, ‘What do we know specifically about what was hit, what happened to the enriched uranium, [and] what the state of the centrifuges is?’” Cruz said.
Trump’s effort required seven B-2 bomber aircraft, 14 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, one submarine, and 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Since Saturday night, there hasn’t been any further U.S. military action, and there haven’t been any reported U.S. fatalities. Trump also helped negotiate a ceasefire on Monday between Iran and Israel after Israel began its own series of strikes over a week ago.