GOP Rep on leaked DIA report: ‘I'll take Israeli intelligence over that document any time'
Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown why he thinks Israeli Intelligence about the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities is more reliable than an assessment from the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
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Washington Post
29 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Trump attacks the media for reporting on intelligence assessment of Iran strikes
President Donald Trump is repeatedly condemning CNN and The New York Times for reports that call into question the damage caused by last weekend's U.S. strikes of Iran — and downplaying his own intelligence analysts in the process. Trump on Wednesday called on CNN to throw out 'like a dog' a reporter who has worked on the story and suggested Times reporters were 'bad and sick people' who were attempting to demean American pilots involved in the strikes.
Atlantic
29 minutes ago
- Atlantic
What America Can Learn From Iran's Failure
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The latest round of the Israel-Iran war is over, and the immediate outcome appears decisive. In just 12 days, Israel eliminated the leadership of Iran's military, air force, and intelligence agency; bombed the country's nuclear sites; and took out dozens of missiles and launchers on the ground before they could be used. Iran, by contrast, was unable to take down a single Israeli jet, and was reduced to firing decreasing volleys of ballistic missiles at Israel's population centers, killing 27 civilians and one 18-year-old soldier at home with his family. All active-duty military deaths were on the Iranian side. Israel's achievements were made possible by their stunning intelligence penetration of the Iranian regime's highest ranks. In the first hours of the conflict, Mossad agents reportedly launched drones from inside Iranian territory to neutralize air defenses, and lured much of Iran's top brass to a supposedly secret bunker that was then pummeled by Israeli forces. These early coups enabled Israel to achieve air dominance over Iran, a country some 1,500 miles away. To understand how the regime's leaders could have failed so utterly to suss out Israeli spooks, one needs to understand another time when Israel was alleged to have taken control of Tehran's skies. In the summer of 2018, Iran was experiencing a drought. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Middle East and would not have made international news if not for the response of a regime functionary, who blamed the weather on Israel. 'The changing climate in Iran is suspect,' Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said at a press conference. 'Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain.' He went on to accuse the Jewish state of 'cloud and snow theft.' This story seems like a silly bit of trivia until one realizes that Jalali was also the head of Iran's Civil Defense Organization, tasked with combating sabotage. In other words, a key person in charge of thwarting Israeli spies in Iran was an incompetent conspiracy theorist obsessed with Jewish climate control. About a week after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Jalali celebrated the massacre and boasted in state-run media that Israel's 'military and intelligence dominance has collapsed and will not be repaired anymore.' Unsurprisingly, it was on his watch that Israel executed an escalating campaign of physical and cybersabotage against Iran's nuclear program, culminating in the war this month. Jalali is but one of many high-level Iranian functionaries who seemingly believe their own propaganda about their enemies. Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani once told Fox News that Israel supported the Islamic State, despite ISIS executing attacks against Israelis. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suggested at the United Nations that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the U.S. government. It would be easy to dismiss Iran's wartime failures as unique to the country's dysfunctional authoritarian system. But that would be a mistake. Jalali and other top Iranian officials were unable to defeat Israel not just because their own intelligence capabilities didn't match up, but because their adherence to regime-sanctioned fantasies made grasping Israel's actual abilities impossible for them. As a result, once Israel decided, after October 7, that it could no longer tolerate the risks of constant aggression from Iran and its proxies, the regime's defenses quickly folded. In this way, Iran's predicament is a cautionary tale about what happens when loyalty to a ruling ideology—rather than capability—determines who runs a society, and when conspiracies, rather than reality, shape decision making. Although the Iranian theocracy presents an acute case of this phenomenon, the early symptoms are beginning to manifest in democratic societies, including our own. Consider: Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has cast doubt on decades of scientific research on the effectiveness of vaccines. He recently fired the entire membership of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and appointed several vaccine skeptics to the panel, which is now planning to review childhood vaccination standards. Kennedy attained his position as a reward for endorsing Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has suggested that the former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad did not use chemical weapons against his own people in 2017 and 2018, despite extensive documentation of the attacks, including by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the previous Trump administration. A former Democrat, she also attained her position after endorsing Trump. Thomas Fugate, a 22-year-old recent college graduate who worked on Trump's 2024 campaign, is now the interim director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, despite having no apparent experience in counterterrorism. And that's to say nothing of Congress, where people such as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a conspiracy theorist who once speculated that the Rothschild banking dynasty was setting wildfires with a space laser, now sit on the powerful House Oversight Committee. Politicians have long rewarded their allies with plum positions. But when allegiance replaces proficiency as the primary qualification for advancement, and conspiracism replaces competency, disaster looms. Flunkies guided by regime ideology lack the capacity to understand and solve national crises. Just look at Iran. When Jalali blamed his country's drought on Israel, Iran's chief forecaster pushed back, but tentatively, seemingly afraid to upset those in charge. The general 'probably has documents of which I am not aware,' Ahad Vazifeh, the director of forecasting at Iran's Meteorological Organization, said. 'But on the basis of meteorological knowledge, it is not possible for a country to steal snow or clouds.' He then offered a warning that is as applicable to America today as it was then to Iran: 'Raising such questions not only does not solve any of our problems, but will deter us from finding the right solutions.' The self-deportation psyop The David Frum Show: Why do billionaires go crazy? The worst sandwich is back. Today's News President Donald Trump said that U.S. and Iranian officials will speak next week, but Iran has not confirmed whether such talks are scheduled. Zohran Mamdani is the presumptive Democratic candidate for the New York City mayoral race; Andrew Cuomo conceded last night. Members of the CDC's vaccine-advisory panel, who were recently appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appeared inclined to overhaul longstanding vaccine recommendations during a meeting today. More From The Atlantic Evening Read Brace Yourself for Watery Mayo and Spiky Ice Cream By Yasmin Tayag In the kitchen, an ingredient's taste is sometimes less important than its function. Cornstarch has rescued many a watery gravy; gelatin turns juice to Jell-O. Yet the substances that make bread fluffy, hold mayonnaise together, and keep the cream in ice cream have, according to the new stance of the United States government, 'no culinary use.' These natural and synthetic substances, called emulsifiers, are added to processed foods to give them the textures that Americans have come to love. They've also become targets in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s push to remove many food additives from the American diet. Watch. Our film critic David Sims has a summertime assignment for you: watching these movies. Read. At night, Toni Morrison worked on her novels. By day, as an editor at Random House, she championed a new generation of writers, Clint Smith writes. Play our daily crossword. Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
Fox News
30 minutes ago
- Fox News
Poll: Majority of Republicans back Trump's strikes on Iran; most Americans fear getting dragged into war
The country is, once again, divided along partisan lines, this time over the U.S. joining Israel in military strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Such was the case on Capitol Hill this week as congressional Democrats railed against the "unconstitutionality" of President Donald Trump ordering attacks on three nuclear sites in Iran, while most Republican lawmakers celebrated his bold move to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear capability. Forty-two percent of voters support the U.S. strikes against Iran, while 51% oppose them, according to the Quinnipiac University poll, conducted between June 22-24 in the days after the U.S. strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan in Iran. The results were split along party lines, with 81% of Republicans supporting the strikes compared to 75% of Democrats opposing them. Sixty percent of independents opposed the strikes, while 35% supported them. "No ambivalence from Republicans on the U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear sites. By a large margin, GOP voters give full-throated support to the mission," Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement. Half of voters, at 50%, think the strikes would make Americans less safe, while 42% said they would make Americans safer. Results were once again split along party lines. Seventy-six percent of Democrats said striking Iran's nuclear program would make Americans less safe, while 80% of Republicans said it would make Americans safer. According to the poll, nearly 8 in 10 voters are either very concerned, 44%, or somewhat concerned, 34%, about the U.S. getting dragged into war with Iran. Only 22% of voters are not concerned. "American voters, most of whom are not supportive of the country joining in the Israel-Iran conflict, are extremely troubled by the possibility that involvement could metastasize and draw the U.S. into a direct war with Iran," pollster Malloy said. Forty-two percent of voters think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, while 45% say support for Israel is about right. Only 5% say the U.S. is not supportive enough. The percentage of voters calling the U.S. too supportive of Israel is at an all-time high since Quinnipiac University first posed the question to registered voters in January 2017. The percentage of voters calling the U.S. not supportive enough is an all-time low since then, the poll reveals. Half of voters, 50%, support Israel's military strikes against nuclear and military sites inside Iran, while 40% oppose them. Eighty percent of Republicans support them, while 60% of Democrats do not. The Quinnipiac University Poll included 979 self-identified registered voters nationwide who were surveyed from June 22-24, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Trump announced the U.S. successfully struck Iran's nuclear sites Saturday night. Israel had launched a series of coordinated attacks on Iran the previous week, which Iran had retaliated against, prompting the countries to exchange strikes. After the U.S. struck Iran, the Islamist country launched retaliatory attacks on a U.S. air base in Qatar. The president indicated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran earlier this week, touting a successful mission to hinder Iran's nuclear sites without engaging the U.S. in an escalatory Middle East conflict.
