‘Obliteration' or not, House Republicans argue Iran strikes were a diplomatic win

Politico

5 hours ago

House Republicans have a new message about U.S. airstrikes on Iran: It matters less about how much damage was done, and more that it succeeded in bringing a badly weakened Tehran back to the negotiating table.
Several GOP lawmakers hammered that message Friday morning as they left a classified briefing by some of President Donald Trump's top military and intelligence officials on last weekend's surprise U.S. airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
It marked a small but notable pivot for supporters of Trump's policy agenda who have struggled in recent days to back up his repeated claims that Iran's nuclear program has been 'obliterated.'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in the briefing that the objective of the strikes was to bring Iran to the negotiating table, according to two attendees. Iran and Israel reached a ceasefire Monday and Trump said Wednesday that new talks with Iran are planned for next week.
While many GOP senators who received a similar briefing Thursday were left dancing around Trump's maximalist portrayal of the strikes' long-term impact, House leadership on Friday made a concerted effort to frame the success of the mission as hinging on more than just damage assessments.
'I think the greatest evidence that we have of the effectiveness of this mission was that Iran came immediately and was willing to engage in a ceasefire agreement that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks back,' Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the briefing. Johnson, like other Republicans, also insisted the strike resulted in a 'substantial setback' for Iran's nuclear program.
The readout for lawmakers came days after the leak of a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment suggesting U.S. airstrikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months.
That set off a scramble by Trump, Rubio, Defense Secretary Hegseth and other senior Cabinet officials to push out new intelligence combating the DIA report, which the Pentagon intelligence agency said was a preliminary and low-confidence assessment. Hegseth has said the FBI and Pentagon are probing the leak.
Several Republicans exiting the briefing — and at least one of the briefers inside the closed-door meeting — suggested that the exact description of the damage was immaterial. Iran had received a harsh message that any attempt to build a nuclear weapon would be met with force.'Regardless of whether you believe the leaked assessment — which was a 'low-confidence' assessment — the U.S. was able to go in there without any resistance and strike whatever it wanted to,' said House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) 'So even if you believe that worst case scenario and we need to go back in there, we can.'
Rep. Darell Issa (R-Calif.), a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, added that the strikes instilled in Iran that there was a 'price to pay for continuing to enrich [uranium] beyond the 60 percent threshold.'
But some Democrats emerged from the briefing with lingering questions about how effective the attack was at halting Iran's nuclear ambitions — and preventing a future conflict from reigniting.
'I'm walking out of this thinking we still don't know,' said Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. 'The contradictions within the intelligence have still not been resolved.'
'We've got a cornucopia of adjectives ranging from 'obliterated' to 'destroyed' to 'set back',' said top Intelligence Committee Democrat Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). 'The question is, did we significantly set back that program? And we still don't have a good answer to that question.'
Himes also cast doubt on the idea that the strikes had paved the way for a diplomatic breakthrough acceptable to Israel, given that they had been 'browbeaten' by the U.S. into the ceasefire.
'If you're the Israelis and you suspect that we didn't get it all, or that there's not going to be a negotiation, you've got a tough conversation with the president of the United States,' Himes said.
Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) suggested that Trump's declaration of the strikes' success early on may have been bravado — because Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine said at a news briefing just after the strikes that the full damage assessment would take time.
'You don't have to read classified material to know he overstated,' Quigley said. 'It's dangerous to overstate, because you need to know what the risks are, because you've got to face the risk — the risk that exists, not what you want the risk to be.'
The two classified sessions featured the same cadre of briefers: Hegseth, Rubio, Caine and CIA director John Ratcliffe.
For the second time in two days, that meant Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was noticeably missing from the conversation.
Gabbard has been sidelined amid Israel's conflict with Iran and has reportedly clashed with Trump.
Asked about the absence of the notional top spy in the U.S. intelligence community, Himes described it as 'very peculiar.' Still, some Republicans downplayed the significance.
'I'm not sure that's really meaningful. I think we got the information that we needed to get from the people most directly involved,' said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), an Intelligence Committee member.
Both Thursday and Friday's sessions also came after days of complaints from lawmakers that they weren't kept in the loop about the weekend's surprise attack on Iranian nuclear sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz. The mission involved seven B-2 stealth aircraft and a guided missile submarine, and marked the first combat use ever of the 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker busting bomb, with 14 dropped on the Fordo facility and other sites.
But many Democrats argue the strikes, which Congress didn't vote to authorize, amounted to an unconstitutional overreach by Trump. House and Senate Democrats are now pushing war powers legislation that would prohibit Trump from taking further military action against Iran without congressional approval.
The Senate plans to vote Friday evening on Sen. Tim Kaine's (D-Va.) resolution to rein in Trump's war powers on Iran, but that measure is almost certain to fail unless Republicans break ranks with the administration.
Libertarian Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed his own war powers resolution and criticized Trump's decision to strike Iran as unconstitutional — which made him a target for Trump — but stood down from forcing a vote after Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. Progressives and top national security Democrats, though, are still pushing for a vote in the coming weeks.