Depending on who you ask, the U.S. bombing operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan was either a smashing success that severely crippled Tehran’s nuclear program or a flashy show whose results were less than advertised.
President Trump and his top advisers are adamant that Iran’s nuclear capacity was dealt a significant blow. Trump has used the word “obliterated” multiple times in the last few days. True to form, ID Vance, the vice-president, has jumped on TV to burnish the administration’s narrative: Trump took decisive action to bring Iran to heel. “The bottom line is. (the Iranians] are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action,” Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, proclaimed in a June 25 interview.
The problem: the administration’s public stance doesn’t match up with what the U.S. intelligence community is actually saying. According to a preliminary report by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the strikes did not wipe out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure—if anything, significant components remain intact, including centrifuges and Iran’s stockpile of 60 per cent enriched uranium. While the DIA is only one agency in America’s massive intelligence apparatus—and others will likely have different opinions—the assessment was concerning enough for Trump and his allies to furiously attempt to discredit it. We are now in the strange situation where the president of the United States, the U.S. intelligence community’s most important customer, is essentially warring with his own analysts.
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