HEGSETH IS RIGHT. This newsletter has often noted a peculiar feature of some media coverage of President Donald Trump: When Trump or Republicans say something, many reporters and commentators reflexively seek to knock it down. When Trump or Republicans say A, they immediately say not-A. Do Trump and his GOP allies say former President Joe Biden seems out of it? Then Biden must be just fine.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered his own description of the phenomenon when he was addressing media coverage of the effectiveness of the U.S. bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Trump has said the raid was a huge success and that U.S. bombers “completely demolished” and “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites. Almost immediately, some media reports, citing anonymously leaked early assessments, said that was not true. Addressing the Pentagon press corps, Hegseth accused journalists of rooting for the president to fail. “You cheer against Trump so hard,” he said. “It’s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad.”
There’s something to that. Hegseth appeared particularly angry because rooting against Trump in this particular case — that is, hoping he is wrong in his positive assessment of the bombing’s effects — also means rooting against the U.S. military.
Of course, reporters, even the most reflexively anti-Trump, would deny doing any such thing. But there is no denying that some news organizations, acting on scant evidence, jumped to suggest that the U.S. bombing — Trump’s most consequential foreign policy decision so far — was, if not an outright failure, not nearly as effective as the president claimed.
Exhibit A is a story published Wednesday by CNN headlined, “Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.” Citing a preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the story reported that the bombing not only did not destroy the “core components” of Iran’s nuclear program, but it likely “only set it back by months.” It appears CNN had not actually seen the assessment, which was surely highly classified, but instead based its reporting on descriptions “by seven people briefed on it.”
Seven sources sound pretty impressive — until you read a bit further down the story. “Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed,” the story said. “One of the people said the centrifuges are largely ‘intact.’ Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the U.S. strikes.”
In the blink of an eye, seven sources went down to two sources and then down to one source “briefed” on the assessment. In addition, the assessment was a very early look at the situation, just hours after the bombing, and analysts had “low confidence” in its ultimate accuracy.
Hegseth pounded home those points. “It was preliminary, a day and a half after the actual strike, when it admits itself in writing that it requires weeks to accumulate the necessary data to make such an assessment,” Hegseth said. “It’s preliminary. It points out that it’s not been coordinated with the intelligence community at all. There’s low confidence in this particular report. It says in the report there are gaps in the information.” Hegseth continued, “It says in the report multiple linchpin assumptions are what this assessment — a linchpin assumption, you know what that is? That means your entire premise is predicated on a linchpin. If you’re wrong, everything else is wrong. And still this [DIA] report acknowledges it’s likely severe damage.”
After the leaks came out, CIA Director John Ratcliffe offered support for Trump’s and Hegseth’s position. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s nuclear program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,” Ratcliffe said in a statement. “This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.” Hegseth also offered quotes from other sources — the United Nations, the Israeli government, and others — to support his position.
A number of administration supporters pointed out that the lead reporter on the CNN piece, Natasha Bertrand, has a history of writing poorly supported hit pieces directed at Trump. In his first term, Bertrand was a vocal proponent of the so-called Steele Dossier, the collection of salacious, damaging, and unfounded rumors targeting Trump that was compiled by a former British spy paid by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In the 2020 contest, Bertrand pushed a letter from former intelligence officers who wrongly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation operation: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The Biden campaign organized the letter; the laptop was genuine.
You get the idea. The main point is that at this moment in the story, so soon after the U.S. bombing, there is simply no way to know its full effect with great certainty. But think about it. After more than a week of damaging Israeli attacks, the United States, with great precision, then drops 14 bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds, on Iranian facilities. The U.S. also threw in some cruise missiles on top. Given the quality of the intelligence about Iran’s equipment and the accuracy of the targeting, it is reasonable to suspect that the attacks did some very serious damage. There is also reason to be skeptical about sources — maybe seven, or maybe two, or perhaps just one — who have been briefed on the matter and want to declare it a failure quickly. Who knows? Maybe they have an agenda. In any event, we will learn more in the coming days about the full effects of the U.S. and Israeli attacks.