Trump's Flawless Strike on Iran Has a Big Catch
Trump's Iran intervention couldn't have gone better. But saying the nuclear program has been 'obliterated' is delusional, explains Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marc Champion. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Boston Globe
14 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Senate Republicans revise Trump's policy bill, scrounging for votes to pass it
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Republican leaders in the Senate are rushing to shore up support for the legislation so they can quickly pass it and send it to the House for final approval in time to meet the July 4 deadline Trump has set. An initial vote in the Senate could come later Saturday. Advertisement Party leaders are trying to appease two flanks of their conference. Some, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said they could not support it without greater reassurances that the Medicaid cuts it contains would not hurt rural hospitals in their states. And fiscal hawks, including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, have said they do not want to back legislation that would only increase the deficit. Advertisement The core of the bill remains the same. It would extend tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017 and add some new ones Trump campaigned on, while slashing spending on safety-net programs, including Medicaid and food assistance. The biggest tax cuts and the biggest changes to those anti-poverty programs remained intact. Taken together, the bill would likely increase federal debt by more than $3 trillion over the next decade, though lawmakers are still shaping the bill and waiting on an official estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. With Trump demanding quick action, Republicans in Congress have intensified their efforts to push it through to enactment even as many of them — including several who voted for it in the House — have been open about their reservations about a measure they are concerned could be a political loser. The revisions released early Saturday were designed to allay some of those concerns. Senators, including Tillis and Susan Collins, R-Maine, had pressed for the inclusion of a rural hospital fund to help health care providers absorb the impact of a provision that would crack down on strategies that many states have developed to finance their Medicaid programs. Despite their pushback, that provider tax change remains in the bill, though lawmakers have delayed its implementation by one year. It is unclear whether a $25 billion compensation fund will be enough to win their votes. Collins had suggested that she wanted to provide as much as $100 billion to ensure that rural hospitals, which operate on thin margins, were not adversely affected. Advertisement But it appeared to be enough to win over at least one Republican holdout who had expressed concern about the Medicaid cuts — Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who said he would vote for the bill and was confident that changes benefit his state at least in the short term. A new provision allowing 'individuals in a noncontiguous state' to be exempt from enforcing new work requirements imposed on SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, appeared aimed at mollifying Murkowski of Alaska. Her state would be hit with billions of dollars in nutrition assistance costs as a result of the legislation, and she had cited the provision as one of her chief concerns. The bill also includes new health provisions designed to benefit Alaska, as well as new tax benefits for fishers in the state's waters. Some of the changes were aimed at appealing to members of the House, where Republicans from high-tax states like New York have threatened to sink the bill if it does not include a substantial increase in the state and local tax deduction, currently capped at $10,000. Senate Republicans, skeptical of the deduction, still ultimately decided to match the House plan to lift the cap to $40,000. But while the House made the increase permanent, the Senate keeps it for only five years, allowing it to snap back to $10,000 in 2030. The newest draft makes even sharper cuts to subsidies for wind and solar power, something that Trump and other conservatives had explicitly called for this past week. It remains to be seen whether those changes could cause friction with Republicans who have publicly supported green energy credits, including Tillis, Murkowski and Sen. John Curtis of Utah. Advertisement Previously, the Senate proposed allowing companies that were building wind and solar farms to claim a tax credit worth at least 30% of their costs if they started construction this year, with a phaseout over two years. But the revised bill would require companies place their projects 'in service' by the end of 2027 to claim the tax break. The bill would also impose additional taxes on renewable energy projects that receive 'material assistance' from China, even if they don't qualify for the credit. Because China dominates global supply chains, those new fees could affect a large number of projects. The new Senate measure would more quickly end tax credits for electric vehicles, doing away with them by Sept. 30. It would also slow the phaseout of a lucrative tax credit to make hydrogen fuels, allowing such projects to qualify if construction were started by the end of 2027, instead of by the end of this year. The bill also includes a provision written by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of federal land across the American West in order to build housing. Earlier versions of that proposal that would have auctioned off even more acreage had drawn fierce opposition from conservative hunters and outdoorsmen, and Republican senators from Montana and Idaho had said they would not vote for it. 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The Hill
17 minutes ago
- The Hill
Nikki Haley hails Trump for US strikes but warns ‘Iran is not done'
Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley offered her first praise for President Trump in several months in a Monday op-ed in Israel Hayom, an Israeli right-wing newspaper. She congratulated his decision to strike three Iranian nuclear sites but warned of further retaliation from Iran. 'Those in America that worry about why these strikes took place should understand that those strikes were a move to keep Americans safer. That was a move to take out one of the threats that Iran has used against Americans for years,' Haley wrote in the outlet owned by Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson. Israel Hayom is distributed in Hebrew and is also available online in English. The op-ed is a rare public appearance for Haley, who has largely faded from public view since the 2024 election. When she has spoken on Trump's foreign policy decisions in recent months, she has often criticized them, panning him for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and slamming his acceptance of a Qatari jet. In the opinion piece, however, Haley praised Trump's decision as 'very well done' while arguing that the United States should continue to be hawkish on Iran for the sake of both America and Israel. 'A safe and secure Israel helps us have a safe and secure America,' she wrote, arguing that the chance of diplomacy with Tehran was thin. 'They always say they want to talk, but the action doesn't match what they want to do,' she wrote. 'Trump was right that while you could kick this can down the road if you wanted, the threat would only get bigger.' She also took aim at the United Nations after Secretary-General António Guterres said he was 'gravely alarmed' by the strikes, accusing the international arbiter of failing to condemn Iran's moves on ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Haley finished by warning that America and Israel both needed to remain on guard. 'Americans need to be vigilant of our military bases in the region. We need to be vigilant of cyber attacks that could come our way through Iran. Iran is not done,' she wrote. As Trump's ambassador to the United Nations during his first term, Haley made the case both to him and to the global stage that the United States should back out of its 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. In the 2024 Republican presidential primary, during which she attempted to criticize the president, she also positioned herself as both a staunch defender of Israel and a Middle East hawk. After being the last of Trump's primary challengers to bow out, Haley failed to secure a place in his administration (she claimed she wanted no part in it). She is currently at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, and making her way around the speaker circuit.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's nuclear sites, top general tells lawmakers, citing depth of the target
The US military did not use bunker-buster bombs on one of Iran's largest nuclear sites last weekend because the site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective, the US' top general told senators during a briefing on Thursday. The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan's underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. US B2 bombers dropped over a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites. But Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. The classified briefing to lawmakers was conducted by Caine, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. A spokesperson for Caine declined to comment, noting that he cannot comment on the chairman's classified briefing to Congress. During the briefing, Ratcliffe told lawmakers that the US intelligence community assesses that the majority of Iran's enriched nuclear material is buried at Isfahan and Fordow, according to a US official. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN on Thursday night after receiving the briefing that some of Iran's capabilities 'are so far underground that we can never reach them. So they have the ability to move a lot of what has been saved into areas where there's no American bombing capacity that can reach it.' An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country's nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. The Trump officials who briefed lawmakers this week sidestepped questions about the whereabouts of Iran's stockpile of already-enriched uranium. President Donald Trump again claimed Friday that nothing was moved from the three Iranian sites before the US military operation. But Republican lawmakers emerged from the classified briefings on Thursday acknowledging that the US military strikes may not have eliminated all of Iran's nuclear materials. But they argued that doing so was not part of the military's mission. 'There is enriched uranium in the facilities that moves around, but that was not the intent or the mission,' Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas told CNN. 'My understanding is most of it's still there. So we need a full accounting. That's why Iran has to come to the table directly with us, so the (International Atomic Energy Agency) can account for every ounce of enriched uranium that's there. I don't think it's going out of the country, I think it's at the facilities.' 'The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain particular aspects of their nuclear program. Those were eliminated. To get rid of the nuclear material was not part of the mission,' GOP Rep. Greg Murphy told CNN. 'Here's where we're at: the program was obliterated at those three sites. But they still have ambitions,' said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. 'I don't know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists. But it wasn't part of the targets there.' '(The sites) were obliterated. Nobody can use them anytime soon,' Graham also said. Weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Jeffrey Lewis told CNN that commercial satellite images show that Iran has accessed the tunnels at Isfahan. 'There were a moderate number of vehicles present at Isfahan on June 26 and at least one of the tunnel entrances was cleared of obstructions by mid-morning June 27,' Lewis said. 'If Iran's stockpile of (highly enriched uranium) was still in the tunnel when Iran sealed the entrances, it may be elsewhere now.' Additional satellite imagery captured on June 27 by Planet Labs show the entrance to the tunnels were open at the time, according to Lewis. The preliminary DIA assessment noted that the nuclear sites' above ground structures were moderately to severely damaged, CNN has reported. That damage could make it a lot harder for Iran to access any enriched uranium that does remain underground, sources said, something that Graham alluded to on Thursday. 'These strikes did a lot of damage to those three facilities,' Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat, told CNN on Thursday night. 'But Iran still has the know-how to put back together a nuclear program. And if they still have that enriched material, and if they still have centrifuges, and if they still have the capability to very quickly move those centrifuges into what we call a cascade, we have not set back that program by years. We have set it back by months.' Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz. CNN's Manu Raju contributed to this report.
