Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump lashed out at leakers and the media over an intelligence report that suggested the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were not as much of a success as the president boasted.
CNN was first to report on the intelligence assessment this week, citing four anonymous sources who claimed the three Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. on Saturday were not “completely and totally obliterated,” as Trump bragged about. Instead, the country’s nuclear program was reportedly only set back by a few months.
The New York Times, which subsequently covered the report, claimed the nuclear sites, Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, had suffered only “moderate to severe damage.”
The White House released a statement following the report, claiming that the U.S. airstrike, combined with “Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program” had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”
Trump on Wednesday compared the U.S. airstrike on the nuclear facilities to the Hiroshima bombing during World War II, which killed an estimated 140,000 people in Japan.
“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki,” Trump said. “But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war.”
Hegseth said an investigation is now underway into the preliminary classified report leaks that undermined Trump’s claim, suggesting the information was likely leaked for political purposes.
“Of course we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now, because this information is for internal purposes, battle damage assessments,” Hegseth said at a press conference during the NATO summit in the Netherlands. “And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad, when this was an overwhelming success.”
Rubio got defensive, calling the leakers “professional stabbers” who characterized reports to the media in a way “that’s absolutely false.”
“There’s no way Iran comes to the table of somehow nothing had happened. This was complete and total obliteration,” Rubio said. “They’re in bad shape, they are way behind today compared to where they were just seven days ago because of what the president did.”
Trump, who was also at the press briefing, went after the journalists who covered the report.
“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum that’s in this group,” Trump said, pointing at the crowd of reporters.
“And not all of you are, you have some great reporters, but you have scum. CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick. And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”
