After American B-2 bombers dropped bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, On Sunday, Trump went on national TV to give himself a pat on the back. He looked into the camera and said,
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.
Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
On Tuesday, CNN reported that the Liar-in-Chief might have overstated the result of the bombing raid.
The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by four people briefed on it.
CNN’s sources were not just guessing. They had access to a report by the people who know best about this sort of thing — America’s military intelligence community. The report goes on:
The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.
The report added some details:
Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.”
“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.
CNN admitted that the assessment was preliminary and things can change. But, if they do, the odds are that the damage assessment will conclude that the damage was less, not more. And Trump’s boast will turn out to have the validity of George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished.”
“The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”
Predictably, Trump’s knob-polishers quickly pooh-poohed the negative news. However, in doing so, they acknowledged that the damning document is real.
The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.
Trump’s pet prevaricator led the denial chorus. She was strident, unoriginal, and dismissive. Her language was the same as every MAGA uses when covering up a fib.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.
The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
The bombing raid on Iran did not come cheap. The best available public estimates put the cost of each of those 14 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) at approximately $14 million to $20 million a piece — or $196 million to $280 million in total. In addition, the delivery added tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
For context, NPR receives $250 million annually from the federal government. And the GOP calls that an unconscionable expense.
If the Iran raid turns out to be the failure every reasonable person expects it to be, it won’t be the first time the efficacy of bombing has been overstated.
Ever since the first pilot threw a grenade out of an open-cockpit plane in WWI, an optimistic element of the military has maintained that bombing by itself is effective. Yet the Allies only won World War II after they put boots on the ground in Germany. And LBJ’s Rolling Thunder bombing campaign against North Vietnam did not win that ruinously expensive exercise in futility.
None of this should come as a surprise. There is little evidence Trump has ever told the truth.