Senators emerged from a classified briefing with senior Trump administration officials on Thursday, which is still strongly divided on the effectiveness of US air strikes last weekend on Iranian nuclear installations, several Democrats claiming that the information presented against the demands of the White House.
While President Donald Trump said that “completely and completely erased” strikes from Iran’s nuclear program, several Democratic senators said that the classified assessments they received suggested a more limited impact – which could put the Iranian program a month.
“There is no doubt that the damage has been caused on the program, but the allegations that we have erased their program simply do not seem to resist reason,” said Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. “For me, it always seems that we have reviewed the Iranian nuclear program only a few months.”
The head of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer of New York, added: “There was no coherent strategy, no end game, no specific and detailed plan on the way Iran does not reach a nuclear weapon.”
“President Trump said the nuclear stock was completely and completely erased,” he said. “I have not received an adequate answer to this question.”
But the Republicans emerged from the same more optimistic briefing. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas described the “blow” strike, quoting what he described as catastrophic successes to the Iranian centrifuge infrastructure, uranium conversion facilities and underground bunkers. Senator Lindsey Graham de Caroline du Sud said that Iran had never been so weak “, although he warned that the mission was not the last chapter.” I don’t want the American people to think it’s over, “he said.” It’s not over as long as the regime decides to change their attitude and their behavior. “
The private briefing, delivered by the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the defense secretary Pete Hegseth, and the president of the joint chiefs, General Dan Caine, came five days after American B -2 bombers joined Israel in a joint mission to destroy three key Iranian nuclear sites – including buried deep under a mountain. Trump described strikes as a historic success known in Israel’s “collective self -defense” and vital American interests.
However, a preliminary intelligence assessment has been disclosed in CNN and New York Times Earlier this week, suits this story. The report, compiled by Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed that the Iranian program had probably only been delayed several months – not “eliminated”, as Trump said. Administration officials strongly condemned the flight and said that access to classified systems would be restricted.
On Wednesday, the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe on Wednesday, both sent declarations supporting Trump’s statements that the facilities were “completely and completely erased”. Ratcliffe said that the Iranian nuclear program had been “seriously damaged”, citing new information “of a historically reliable source / method specifies that several key Iranian nuclear installations have been destroyed and should be rebuilt in the years.”
During a pentagon briefing on Thursday, Hegseth defended the operation as “the most secret and complex military strike in history”. However, he did not offer new evaluations of real damage to the Iranian nuclear program, referring to journalists to the intelligence agencies. “You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it erased – your word,” said Hegseth.
Hegseth also seemed to get around the questions on the question of whether Iran has moved uranium uranium out of the Fordo site before the strike, affirming only that it was “not aware” of intelligence suggesting that everything was “out of words”.
Senator Graham, speaking after the classified briefing, said: “I don’t know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium are, but that was not part of the target set.” Senator Cotton also recognized that the elimination of Iranian uranium stock was not the objective of the mission. “It was not part of the mission to destroy all their enriched uranium or stop it or anything else,” he said.
General Caine, in a much less political tone than Hegseth, concentrated his remarks on the pentagon briefing on logistics and the execution of the operation. He played cockpit video sequences and described how seven B-2 bombers piloted a 37-hour round trip mission to drop 30,000 pounds “Bunker Buster” on the Fordo website. The strikes aimed at two ventilation wells that lead to the heart of the underground complex. The Iranian forces, anticipating a strike, had tried to seal the wells with concrete. Caine said the American forces adapted: a bomb has blown up the traffic jams, and the others plunged into the trees, exploding at the bottom and sending shock waves through the tunnels.
But even with this level of precision and coordination, some senators have declared that the administration had not yet offered a credible explanation on the way in which the strike is part of a larger plan to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran. “I think” erased “is far too strong,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. “Iran continues to be a threat … And for the moment, we have no final evaluation of the battle damage that would allow us to be comfortable or complacent about what has been done.”
Senator Murphy then accused Trump of “deliberately deceiving the public” by saying that the Iranian nuclear installation was erased.
“The only way to really realize Iran’s nuclear program is diplomacy,” he said. “You cannot bomb the knowledge of existence, regardless of the number of scientists you kill. There are still people in Iran who know how to work centrifugal, and if they have still enriched uranium and they always have the possibility of using centrifugal, then you do not return a program per year. You return the program per month. “
