U.S. strikes crippled Iran's nuclear program, Israeli analysis finds
The official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that Tehran has been 'actively trying to hide the damage' from the attacks, which President Trump said in The Hague on Wednesday had all but eliminated Iran's enrichment program.
Trump, who repeatedly defended the effectiveness of the strikes at the NATO Summit, made reference to individuals who had been on the ground to assess the damage, without providing details.
'I can't say it's a final assessment, because we're less than a week after. It's not like we can send officers openly. But that's the indication we have now,' the official said.
A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry on Wednesday said the bombing raid 'badly damaged' the nuclear sites, but the Iranian government has said it will continue its nuclear efforts, which it insists are for peaceful purposes.
A full review of the mission could take weeks, and experts have expressed skepticism of declarative statements by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the U.S. operation was a success within mere days of the attack.
'Battlefield damage assessment is an imprecise art, with initial estimates frequently being way off,' said Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and director for research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'I would be very suspicious of any claims — by Iran, by Trump, by Israel — about what has happened to Iran's enriched uranium stocks or to its centrifuges.'
Israel's preliminary findings come after an initial assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cast doubt on the effectiveness of the American strikes, stating with low confidence that Iran had retained the core elements of its nuclear program despite the attacks, one U.S. official familiar with the findings told The Times. The DIA assessment was first reported by CNN.
The U.S. attack followed nine days of an Israeli military campaign that decimated Iran's air defenses, its military leadership and its ballistic missile stockpiles, while degrading its nuclear facilities.
Israeli intelligence has also monitored the reaction to the campaign among Iranian leadership, which has struggled to comprehend the extent of the damage itself, the Israeli official said.
'We don't believe everyone in the leadership knows what really happened, because the whole program was compartmentalized — they weren't sharing a lot of information, and a lot of the officers who were highly involved on the ground level were eliminated,' the official continued. 'So a lot of the top leadership hasn't fully begun to understand what's happened.'
The developing intelligence picture comes as Trump defended the U.S. mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, during multiple appearances at the NATO Summit in The Hague on Wednesday.
'It's been obliterated, totally obliterated,' he said of Iran's nuclear facilities. Addressing the DIA report, he added, 'They did a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it's just a few days after.'
The U.S. deployment of massive, 'bunker-buster' munitions targeting Iran's main nuclear sites — including six dropped on Fordo, a facility burrowed deep into the side of a mountain — was intended to bury its most advanced equipment and most highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear warheads.
Initial assessments of the damage were unclear, but since then, Trump said, 'we've collected additional intelligence. We've also spoken to people that have seen the site, and the site is obliterated.'
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Los Angeles Times
9 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Social Security turns 90 this week. Republicans are trying to keep it from reaching 100
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a clear mind about the value of Social Security on Aug. 14, 1935, the day he signed it into law. 'The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure,' he said in the Oval Office. 'We can never insure 100 per cent of the population against 100 per cent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against ... poverty-ridden old age.' He called it a 'cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.' FDR envisioned further programs to bring relief to the needy and healthcare for all Americans. Some of that happened during the following nine decades, but the structure is still incomplete. And now, as Social Security observes the 90th anniversary of that day, the program faces a crisis. If there are doubts about whether Social Security will survive long enough to observe its centennial, those have less to do with its fiscal challenges, the solutions of which are certainly within the economic reach of the richest nation on Earth. They have more to do with partisan politics, specifically the culmination of a decades-long GOP project to dismantle the most successful, and the most popular, government assistance program in American history. From a distance, the raids on the program's customer service infrastructure and the security of its data mounted by Elon Musk's DOGE earlier this year looked somewhat random. Fueled by abject ignorance about how the program worked and what its data meant, DOGE set in place plans to cut the program's staff by 7,000, or 12 percent, and to close dozens of field offices serving Social Security applicants and beneficiaries. This at a time when the Social Security case load is higher than ever and staffing had already approached a 50-year low. This might have been billed as an effort to impose 'efficiency' on the system. But 'a more accurate description,' writes Monique Morrissey of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, 'is sabotage.' That has been conservatives' long-term plan — make interactions with Social Security more involved, more difficult and more time-consuming in order to make it seem ever less relevant to average Americans' lives. Once that happened, the public would be softened up to accept a privatized retirement system. Get the inefficient government off the backs of the people, the idea goes, so Wall Street can saddle up. George W. Bush's privatization plan, indeed, was conceived and promoted by Wall Street bankers, who thirsted for access to the trillions of dollars passing through the system's hands. This was never much of a secret, but it simmered beneath the surface. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking at a July 30 event sponsored by Breitbart News, said the quiet part out loud. Referring to a private savings account program enacted as part of the GOP budget reconciliation bill Trump signed July 4, Bessent said, 'In a way, it is a back door for privatizing Social Security.' The private accounts are to be jump-started with $1,000 deposits for children born this year through 2028, to be invested in stock index mutual funds; families can add up to $5,000 annually in after-tax income, with withdrawals beginning when the child reaches 18, though in some cases incurring a stiff penalty. I asked the Treasury Department for a clarification of Bessent's remark, but didn't receive a reply. Bessent, however, did try to walk the statement back via a post on X in which he stated that the Trump accounts are 'an additive benefit for future generations, which will supplement the sanctity of Social Security's guaranteed payments.' Sorry, Mr. Secretary, no sale. You're the one who talked about 'privatizing Social Security' at the Breitbart event. You're stuck with it. Plainly, an 'additive' benefit would have nothing to do with Social Security. How it would 'supplement the sanctity' of Social Security benefits isn't apparent from Bessent's statement, or the law. Still, we can parse out the implications based on the long history of conservative attacks on the program. In 1983, the libertarian Cato Journal published a paper by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, two policy analysts at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, titled 'Achieving a 'Leninist' Strategy—i.e., for privatizing Social Security. From Lenin they drew the idea of mobilizing the working class to undermine existing capitalist structures. Cato's 'Leninist' strategy paper explicitly advocated encouraging workers to opt out of Social Security by promising them a payroll tax reduction if they put the money in a private account. IRAs, the authors asserted, would acclimate Americans to entrusting their retirements to a privatized system. They advocated an increase in the maximum annual contribution and its tax deductibility. 'The public would gradually become more familiar with the private option,' they wrote. 'If that did happen, it would be far easier than it is now to adopt the private plan as their principal source of old-age insurance and retirement income.' In other words, it would provide a backdoor for privatizing Social Security. (Germanis has since emerged as a cogent critic of conservative economics. Butler served at Heritage until 2014 and is currently a scholar in residence at the Brookings Institution; he told me in March that he still believes in parallel systems of private retirement savings as we have today, but as 'add on' savings rather than a substitute for Social Security.) Cato, a think tank co-founded by Charles Koch, has never relinquished its quest to privatize Social Security; the notion still occupies pride of place on the institution's web page devoted to the program. In 2005, when I attended a two-day conference on the topic at Cato's Washington headquarters, Michael D. Tanner, then the chair of Cato's Social Security task force, explained that Cato wasn't concerned so much with the system's fiscal and economic issues as with its politics. Its goal, he stated frankly, was to unmake FDR's New Deal. 'This is about whether we redefine a relationship between individuals and government that we've had since 1935,' he told me. 'We say that what was done was wrong then, and it's wrong now. Our position is that people need to be responsible for their own lives.' Yet forcing dramatic change on a program so widely trusted and appreciated is a heavy lift. That's why Republicans have tried to downplay their intentions. Back in 2019, for instance, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) talked about the need to hold discussions about Social Security's future 'behind closed doors.' Secrecy was essential, Ernst said, 'so we're not being scrutinized by this group or the other, and just have an open and honest conversation about what are some of the ideas that we have for maintaining Social Security in the future.' As I observed at the time, that was a giveaway: The only time politicians take actions behind closed doors is when they know the results will be massively unpopular. Raising taxes on the rich to pay for Social Security benefits? That discussion can be held in the open, because the option is decisively favored in opinion polls. Cut benefits? That needs to be done in secret, because Americans overwhelmingly oppose it. Curiously, Trump and his fellow Republicans seem to think that attacking Social Security is an electoral winner. Possibly they've lost sight of the program's importance to the average American. Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 39% of men and 44% of women receive half their income or more from Social Security. In the same cohort, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income. Notwithstanding that reality, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently asserted that delays in sending out Social Security checks or bank deposits would be no big deal. 'Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month,' Lutnick said. 'My mother-in-law, who's 94 — she wouldn't call and complain.... She'd think something got messed up, and she'll get it next month.' He claimed that only 'fraudsters' would complain. I had a different take. Mine was that even a 24-hour delay in benefit payments would have a cataclysmic fallout for the Republican Party. It would be front-page news coast to coast. There would be nowhere for them to hide. While bringing misery to millions of Americans, a delay — which would be unprecedented since the first checks went out in 1940 — would be a gift for Democrats, if they knew how to use it. Where will we go from here? The current administration has already done damage to this critically-important program. An acting commissioner Trump installed briefly interfered with the enrollment process for infants born in Maine—an important procedure to ensure that government benefits continue to flow to their families—because the state's governor had pushed back against Trump in public. In July, the newly-appointed Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, allowed a false and flagrantly political email to go out to beneficiaries and to be posted on the program's website implying that the budget reconciliation bill relieved most seniors of federal income taxes on their benefits. It did nothing of the kind. To the extent that Social Security may face a fiscal reckoning in the next decade, the most effective fix is well-understood by those familiar with the program's structure. It's removing the income cap on the payroll tax, which tops out this year at $176,100 in wage income. Up to that point, wages are taxed at 12.4%, split evenly between workers and their employers. Above the ceiling, the tax is zero. Remove the cap, and make capital gains, dividends and interest income subject to the tax, and Social Security will remain fully solvent into the foreseeable future. Trump and his fellow Republicans don't seem to understand how most Americans view Social Security: as an 'entitlement,' not because they think they're getting something for nothing, but because they know they've paid for it all their working lives. As much as the system's foes would like it to go away, as long as the rest of us remain vigilant against efforts to 'redefine a relationship between individuals and government' established in 1935, we will be able to celebrate its 100th anniversary 10 years from now, in 2035.
Chicago Tribune
9 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Rock Island must preserve its unique natural areas
Rock Island, Illinois, is a masterpiece of wild nature and human development ('Biodiversity vs. expansion: wetlands in the Quad Cities', Aug. 10). I went to school there for four years at Augustana College, and saw the mixture of bald eagle habitats, the arsenal on the river, and the study of underwater dunes in the Mississippi River by the Army Corps of Engineers. But Rock Island doesn't need to destroy more of its one-of-kind nature to build yet even more development. They are deep in poverty because of the casinos, which aren't good jobs. Rock Island is an epicenter of prized wilderness, with centuries of calculated and caring engineering along one of the world's longest rivers. Keep the marshes please and do something smart for once. Those eagles and herrings need you, Rock Island City Council.'Biodiversity vs. expansion: wetlands in the Quad Cities,' what a fantastic story for the Tribune to feature as its lead story on Sunday's front page. The wetlands area in question in Rock Island appears beautiful and is critical habitat for eagles and many other endangered species. Unfortunately, this story is a perfect example of 'the American way,' at least these days. Over and over in our country we see development take precedence over protection of incredible ecological environments. How do you weigh the protection of a significant bald eagle habitat versus building a gas station? It doesn't seem to be a difficult choice. But the article leads one to believe that the gas station will be winning out! Again, this nonsense brings to mind Joni Mitchell's wonderful lyrics when she sang 'they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot'.Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's op-ed highlighting the latest efforts by the current federal government to threaten the public lands of northeastern Minnesota is worthy of greater attention ('Messing with Boundary Waters is bad politics,' Aug. 9). I grew up there and both myself and my extended family continue to live there or visit it annually. It is everything Mr. Feingold says. Many of us in the upper Midwest have this as our touchstone to our local wilderness. Having grown up there, I well remember when the Boundary Waters Canoe Area was created legislatively in 1978, when I was 15. By that time, I had fished, camped and traveled those waters more times than I can remember with my father, mother, siblings and friends— enough to not need a map to get around those waters. Locals revered those lands, as they do still. They also need a way to make a living. In 1978, the ban on motors in the Boundary Waters was a very real concern for those who had fishing, lodging and other businesses dependent on boating access. Time and investment in promoting tourism, as well as creation of the Voyageurs National Park in 1975, have largely addressed those initial concerns on economic impact and the political push-back that came with those concerns. The area's greatest economic driver after the end of the lumbering trade in the early 20th century has been and continues to be iron ore mining. Mining is a notoriously boom-bust industry, and the long-term costs have to be carefully weighed against the short-term gains. I know mining is in the blood of those who live there still, but there are big environmental differences in mining iron ore to mining copper. Plus, do we really want to sell our sacred land's mineral rights to foreigners? In our current national governmental climate, where oversight and protection are all but forgotten in favor of economic privilege for the few, we need to pay attention to this Elizabeth Shakelford's August 8 column ('Gaza's starvation is America's shame,' Aug. 8) concerning the terrible suffering of Gazan residents and U.S. action, or lack thereof, would the allies have accepted an offer from Germany's Nazi government for a ceasefire and peace talks that would have left that government in power? How is Israel supposed to accept the continued existence of the Hamas 'government', a government sworn to Israel's destruction, when a cease fire would be an opportunity to rearm and dig tunnels? The conditions that the residents of Gaza are dealing with are beyond awful. It is clear that Shackelford has more empathy for the people of Gaza than does Hamas, which will stop at nothing, even the terrible suffering of its own people, to achieve its ends. To Hamas, if Hamas is not to be, then the residents of Gaza serve no purpose. How about letting the residents of Gaza vote in a free and fair election as to who they want to be governed by?In her column on August 8, Shackelford deserves special praise for pointing out the connection between America's support for Israel and the ongoing starvation of Gaza's civilian population. While reporting a fact that may not be universally known would merit praise in itself, Shackelford is not just reporting a fact: She's doing it at the risk of tarnishing, perhaps even ruining, her reputation. For American politicians and intellectuals alike, criticizing Israel's policies in Gaza and the West Bank or questioning America's support for Israel has become dangerous, all too often incurring charges of antisemitism. My hunch is that many who in private criticize Israel or America's support for Israel never say a word in public, cowed into silence by the sword of Damocles hanging over them — the omnipresent threat of charges of antisemitism. But, as Shackelford implies, one evil (hatred of Jews) cannot justify another — depraved indifference to the starvation of an entire population. No matter how much America supports Israel, no matter how just Israel's operations in Gaza may be, they cannot justify mass starvation.
Business Journals
9 minutes ago
- Business Journals
Opportunity Zone tracts that could be in play across Los Angeles
Story Highlights New Opportunity Zone program reduces eligible areas by 26%. Governors must select zones by July 1, 2026. Intense lobbying is expected for limited Opportunity Zone designations. The second iteration of the federal Opportunity Zone program is expected to have fewer zones than its predecessor, potentially sparking intense lobbying efforts to determine which census tracts qualify for the high-stakes designation. The sweeping tax-and-spend legislation enacted last month — President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill — changed the criteria of the previous version of the Opportunity Zone program in a way that ultimately will shrink the number of eligible areas. The program by definition is intended to "spur economic growth and job creation in low-income communities while providing tax benefits to investors." GET TO KNOW YOUR CITY Find Local Events Near You Connect with a community of local professionals. Explore All Events In the original program, passed during President Trump's first term as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, 42,176 census tracts were eligible to become designated Opportunity Zones. Ultimately, governors in each state and territory picked 8,764 of those locations to receive the tax-advantaged investments made possible by the program. In the new version of the Opportunity Zone program, Congress narrowed the definition of "low-income community" to census tracts with a median household income that does not exceed 70% of an area's median income, down from an 80% threshold previously. A census tract also would be eligible if it has a poverty rate above 20%. Congress also removed the ability of governors to nominate census tracts that would not otherwise be eligible but were allowed in the previous edition of the program because they were 'contiguous' to an eligible tract. Eliminating those tracts in the program's new version shrinks the eligibility pool even further. The federal government has not yet published an official list of eligible tracts under the new law. But, according to an analysis of census tracts and the most recently available poverty data by The Business Journals, about 26,000 tracts appear to meet the eligibility criteria for an Opportunity Zone designation under the parameters of the revamped program. If governors were to then pick the maximum-allowed 25% of those sites to be Opportunity Zones, that would mean about 6,500 zones in the program — a nearly 26% drop from the number of available sites in the program's first iteration. That figure is in line with other estimates that have found the number of eligible Opportunity Zones could fall by more than 20% under the new law. To determine the estimated number of zones that could be available locally under the new version of the program, The Business Journals analyzed the 2025 Census Bureau list of all tracts and applied the new eligibility rules to those tracts. The analysis included poverty rate data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. In and around Los Angeles, more than 1,300 census tracts appear to qualify under the new criteria. Here's a look at the number of eligible tracts by county, according to The Business Journals' analysis: Los Angeles County: 846 tracts San Bernardino County: 159 Orange County: 138 Riverside County: 131 Ventura County: 44 New rules expected to fuel fights For Jacob Naig, a real estate agent, contractor and Opportunity Zone investor in Des Moines, Iowa, having fewer tracts means every mayor, chamber of commerce official and developers' coalition is going to have to fight harder to ensure their areas are included in the program. 'Look for polished census tract pitch decks, not only letters from governors' offices," Naig said in an email. "In Iowa, I can already see Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and who knows where else jockeying for a limited pool of urban tracts, while rural counties protest that they were forgotten last time and need a carve‑out.' Naig said there also are upsides to fewer Opportunity Zones. The changes should ensure that capital can go to truly distressed regions and not so-called 'tourist' areas as in the previous version of the program — places where no subsidy was truly needed to get developers to build. He also thinks states will devise clearer, more-transparent scoring rubrics, such as highlighting jobs or vacancy rates, to protect Opportunity Zone nominations from political blowback. He anticipates cities and states will pile on additional benefits such as facade grants, expedited permitting or special taxation zones, as well. 'States will codify what was previously ad hoc, and locals will create packages of incentives to sweeten tracts that appear scary on paper,' Naig said. Where Opportunity Zones could be located Some states will have many more eligible census tracts than others, according to The Business Journals' analysis. California tops all states in our estimate, with 2,738 census tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Texas with 2,492 and New York with 1,649. Vermont, on the other hand, has just 19 such census tracts, according to our estimate, followed by Wyoming with 29 and Arkansas with 30. At a more-local level, the most-populous counties are at the top of the list for eligible number of census tracts, according to The Business Journals' analysis. That means Los Angeles County, with 846 tracts that appear to be eligible, followed by Chicago's Cook County, with 528. Harris County (Houston) in Texas has 526 eligible tracts, followed by New York's Kings County (Brooklyn) and Wayne County (Detroit) in Michigan. What will change for the program The new Opportunity Zone program calls for governors to identify their targeted sites by July 1, 2026, and for the program to officially open for investment on Jan. 1, 2027. That might seem like a lengthy timeline, but experts say business owners, landowners, investors and local-government officials should be taking action now — especially since the sun-up to designating new zones is likely to be a time of intense lobbying. Blake Christian, CEO at builder MIT Modular and an Opportunity Zone expert, said lobbying during the first round of the Opportunity Zone program was not pronounced because people were less aware of the full scope of the program and its potential. Governors ended up picking tracts that were already developed or were poorly suited to attract investment. Not this time, Christian said. 'Local lobbying has already begun, and with rural census tracts now more directly competing with urban areas, governors will be getting more public input than they may want,' Christian said. The original Opportunity Zones program saw about $89 billion in qualifying equity investments across 5,600 census tracts through the end of 2022, according to a working paper by the Economic Innovation Group — with expectations those investments will eventually total more than $100 billion. The group additionally noted that Opportunity Zones ultimately were responsible for a net increase of 313,000 housing units over a five-year period. Ahmed Whitt, director of the Center for Wealth Equity at Living Cities, said the new limitations on eligibility will likely discourage some real estate projects that contributed to the issues of gentrification and oversupply that plagued the program previously. 'We'll see more-intense lobbying, especially for select urban neighborhoods,' Whitt said. 'Still overall, the changes in 2.0 are likely to create a more-effective program by focusing on areas that truly need both investment and have growth potential.' Stay on top of the latest real estate news by signing up for The National Observer: Real Estate Edition.
