Trump's spy chiefs say new intel shows Iran's nuclear facilities were destroyed
Two of President Donald Trump's top intelligence chiefs issued statements on Wednesday stating that new intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear facilities were 'destroyed' in U.S. airstrikes over the weekend.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued their statements within hours of each other, reinforcing the administration's daylong blitz to counter media reports of a preliminary government assessment that the strikes had not significantly set back Iran's nuclear program.
Gabbard weighed in with a statement on X around 2 p.m. Wednesday saying that 'New intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed.'
Ratcliffe posted an image of his own statement on social media about two hours later. 'A body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged' in the recent strikes, Ratcliffe said in the 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,' he continued. Ratcliffe added that the agency was continuing to collect 'reliably sourced information' on the matter.
Neither Gabbard nor Ratcliffe provided further details on the intelligence, or specifics on when it had been obtained. But DNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman later said that the intelligence Gabbard cited was U.S. in origin.
A former CIA analyst called it 'highly unusual' for the agency's director to put out an analytic assessment in a press release. But the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence processes, said that it was unlikely that any sources or methods would have been exposed by the statement.
The earlier assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency was reported Tuesday by CNN and other media outlets, which said it found the strikes didn't destroy the core components of the country's nuclear program and likely only set it back by months. DIA stressed Wednesday that its finding were not conclusive.
'This is a preliminary, low confidence assessment — not a final conclusion — and will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available,' DIA said in a statement. 'We have still not been able to review the actual physical sites themselves, which will give us the best indication.'
The leak of the DIA assessment has infuriated Trump. On Wednesday he posted an angry tirade against one of the CNN reporters who wrote the initial story and reiterated his claims that Iran's nuclear facilities had been 'obliterated.'
Gabbard also hit out at the 'propaganda media' in her post.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who stood astride Trump during a nearly hourlong press conference at the NATO summit in The Netherlands on Wednesday, also took turns pushing back angrily on the findings of the DIA report — and the news media's reporting of it.
'Anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the president and the successful mission,' Hegseth charged at one point. The Defense secretary separately told reporters that the Pentagon and the FBI are probing how the classified report was leaked.
Israeli officials also appear to have rushed to the defense of Trump.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement Wednesday from Israel's Atomic Energy Commission stating that the combined effect of U.S. airstrikes and Israel's attacks was to 'set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.'
Daniel Shapiro, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the Biden administration, urged caution in relying too heavily on any initial assessment.
'There's a high likelihood that they did very significant damage to these facilities, but we should wait for the data and the actual information,' Shapiro said. He estimated that it would ordinarily take a matter of weeks for the intelligence community to reach a firm conclusion on the impact of such a strike.
In a Truth Social post Wednesday evening, Trump hinted the administration might share more information on the damage from the strikes soon. He said Hegseth will deliver a 'Major News Conference' Thursday morning that 'will prove both interesting and irrefutable.'
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