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The Hill
11 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
McConnell: Trump has ‘some pretty rabid isolationists over at DoD'
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a swipte at President Trump's national security team in a rare interview as part of a recent pattern of public comments urging the president to consider military intervention in Iran and elsewhere more favorably. 'He's got some pretty rabid isolationists over at [the Department of Defense] — you could argue the vice president is in that group,' the former Senate majority leader told Politico. 'None of those people who've read history.' In a 40-minute conversation with Politico's Jonathan Martin, McConnell praised Trump while urging him to adopt deterrence — peace through strength, Martin wrote — in American foreign policy. 'Most of [Trump's] advisers don't agree with what I'm saying,' McConnell said, acknowledging that his platform has diminished since he left the majority leader position. He noted, for instance, that he had had little contact with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his former Senate colleague. But now, he told Martin, he has 'the freedom to do it that I would not have had if I had still been leader.' McConnell's remarks, published Friday, follow a floor speech this week where he urged the U.S. to support Israel and Ukraine and criticized isolationists close to Trump. He in particular took aim at Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for a video where she warned of 'warmongers' fomenting tensions between nuclear powers. 'The president's own, his own, Director of National Intelligence traveled to Hiroshima to record a bizarre video, not as a warning against Tehran's nuclear ambitions, but presumably against American or Israeli operations to blunt them,' McConnell said on the floor. McConnell previously praised Trump's strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities as deterring Tehran from further nuclear advancement. 'Seizing this opportunity is not an escalation toward war — it is a prudent response to the warmongers in Tehran. Iran would be foolish to misunderstand American resolve,' he said in a statement at the time. 'I commend the President for authorizing decisive action and all U.S. servicemembers responsible for carrying it out,' he added.
The Hill
19 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Murphy: Trump administration knew Gabbard ‘wasn't going to toe the line' at Iran briefing
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Thursday suggested Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was disinvited from a Capitol Hill briefing on the U.S. strikes in Iran because she has not been in lock step with President Trump's assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities. 'I've never, ever been part of a major cabinet level classified briefing where the Director of National Intelligence was banned from the room,' Murphy said in an appearance on CNN's 'The Source.' 'I think it stands to reason that they knew that she was not going to toe the line, that she was likely going to refuse to say what the administration wants, which is that the program was obliterated,' the Connecticut Democrat told host Kaitlan Collins. Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was referring to the classified briefing senators received from CIA Director Ratcliffe, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the strikes. Trump notably broke with Gabbard at the onset of the conflict between Israel and Iran, after the national intelligence chief testified in March that the Iranian regime did not appear to be building a nuclear weapon. Asked about that testimony, Trump shot back: 'I don't care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.' Since launching strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran last Saturday, competing reports have emerged on how significant the damage is. The president and Israeli officials have contended the attacks 'obliterated' the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan enrichment sites and its nuclear program will likely face years of setback. CNN and The New York Times, however, reported that an early U.S. intelligence assessment shows the damage only delaying Tehran's nuclear efforts by a few months. The administration has pushed back strenuously on the reporting, including Hegseth during Thursday's early Pentagon press briefing. The FBI and White House are investigating what they've called a 'leak' of information — and have moved to pair back sharing of classified intelligence, even with members of Congress. A personal lawyer for Trump has also threatened to sue the Times and CNN for their reporting about the preliminary intelligence report. Gabbard has since leaned into Trump's analysis of the damage in recent days, agreeing that the sites had been 'destroyed.' On CNN, Murphy warned that the U.S. strikes was likely counterintuitive to the administration's mission of ending Iran's nuclear program. 'It's true that Israel has targeted a lot of the scientists, but Iran still has the know-how to put back together a nuclear program,' he said, referring to the initial attack on Tehran by the Israeli military on June 13, which killed several of Iran's top leaders and led to over a week of counterstrikes. 'And the strikes potentially could have the impact of convincing this regime in Tehran or the next regime that they now have no choice but to rush to a nuclear weapon,' the senator added.
NDTV
a day ago
- Politics
- NDTV
US Strikes On Iran's Nuclear Sites Only Set Back Its Program By Months
Washington: A US intelligence report suggests that Iran's nuclear program has been set back only a few months after US strikes and was not "completely and fully obliterated" as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment. The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House rejected the DIA assessment, calling it "flat-out wrong." On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a post on X that "New intelligence confirms" what Trump has stated: "Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed. If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do." Gabbard's office declined to respond to questions about the details of the new intelligence, or whether it would be declassified and released publicly. The office of the director of national intelligence coordinates the work of the nation's 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries. The DIA's assessment was preliminary and will be refined as new information becomes available, the agency wrote in a statement on Wednesday. Its authors also characterised it as "low confidence," an acknowledgement that the report's conclusions could be mistaken. According to the DIA statement, analysts have not been able to review the sites themselves. The DIA also said it is working with the FBI to investigate the unauthorised leak of the assessment. The U.S. has held out hope of restarting negotiations with Iran to convince it to give up its nuclear program entirely, but some experts fear that the U.S. strikes - and the potential of Iran retaining some of its capabilities - could push Tehran toward developing a functioning weapon. The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran's highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran's centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people. At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo. The White House pushes back Trump defended his characterisation of the strike's impact. "It was obliteration, and you'll see that," Trump told reporters while attending the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He said the intelligence was "very inconclusive" and described media outlets as "scum" for reporting on it. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was also at the NATO summit, said there would be an investigation into how the intelligence assessment leaked and dismissed it as "preliminary" and "low confidence." Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, "These leakers are professional stabbers." The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said its assessment was that the U.S. and Israeli strikes have "set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years." It did not give evidence to back up its claim. Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from U.S. intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the U.S. assessment was shared with reporters. "It's treasonous so it ought to be investigated," Witkoff said on Fox News Channel. Trump has said in comments and posts on social media in recent days, including Tuesday, that the strike left the sites in Iran "totally destroyed" and that Iran will never rebuild its nuclear facilities. Netanyahu said Tuesday in a televised statement: "For dozens of years I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed ... we brought to ruin Iran's nuclear program." He said the U.S. joining Israel was "historic" and thanked Trump. Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites. Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fuelled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade uranium and develop a bomb. Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, but it has enriched significant quantities of uranium beyond the levels required for any civilian use. The U.S. and others assessed prior to the U.S. strikes that Iran's theocratic leadership had not yet ordered the country to pursue an operational nuclear weapon, but the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so. Vice President JD Vance said in a Monday interview on Fox News Channel that even if Iran is still in control of its stockpile of 408.6 kilograms (900.8 pounds) of enriched uranium, which is just short of weapons-grade, the U.S. has cut off Iran's ability to convert it to a nuclear weapon. "If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don't have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don't have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success. That is the obliteration of their nuclear program, which is why the president, I think, rightly is using that term," Vance said. Approximately 42 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is theoretically enough to produce one atomic bomb if enriched further to 90%, according to the U.N. nuclear watchdog. What experts say Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi informed U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on June 13 - the day Israel launched its military campaign against Iran - that Tehran would "adopt special measures to protect our nuclear equipment and materials." American satellite imagery and analysis firm Maxar Technologies said its satellites photographed trucks and bulldozers at the Fordo site beginning on June 19, three days before the Americans struck. Subsequent imagery "revealed that the tunnel entrances into the underground complex had been sealed off with dirt prior to the U.S. airstrikes," said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar. "We believe that some of the trucks seen on 19 June were carrying dirt to be used as part of that operation." Some experts say those trucks could also have been used to move out Iran's enriched uranium stockpile. "It is plausible that Iran moved the material enriched to 60% out of Fordo and loaded it on a truck," said Eric Brewer, a former U.S. intelligence analyst and now deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Iran could also have moved other equipment, including centrifuges, he said, noting that while enriched uranium, which is stored in fortified canisters, is relatively easy to transport, delicate centrifuges are more challenging to move without inflicting damage. Apart from its enriched uranium stockpile, over the past four years Iran has produced the centrifuges key to enrichment without oversight from the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Iran also announced on June 12 that it has built and will activate a third nuclear enrichment facility. IAEA chief Grossi said the facility was located in Isfahan, a place where Iran has several other nuclear sites. After being bombarded by both the Israelis and the Americans, it is unclear if, or how quickly, Isfahan's facilities, including tunnels, could become operational. But given all of the equipment and material likely still under Iran's control, this offers Tehran "a pretty solid foundation for a reconstituted covert program and for getting a bomb," Brewer said. Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan policy center, said that "if Iran had already diverted its centrifuges," it can "build a covert enrichment facility with a small footprint and inject the 60% gas into those centrifuges and quickly enrich to weapons grade levels." But Brewer also underlined that if Iran launched a covert nuclear program, it would do so at a disadvantage, having lost to Israeli and American strikes vital equipment and personnel that are crucial for turning the enriched uranium into a functional nuclear weapon.
The Hill
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Panetta: Trump contradicting intelligence assessments ‘a very scary prospect'
Former CIA director Leon Panetta described President Trump's recent remarks doubting the intelligence community while launching military action against Iran as 'very scary' on Thursday. 'It undermines the work of our intelligence professionals who really are focused on trying to provide the president with the truth — when the president questions their credibility, that certainly undermines their morale, I'm sure,' he told the London-based The i Paper. 'But secondly, it also creates a real problem for the president, because if he rejects the intelligence he's receiving, then what will be the basis for the decisions that he makes in the future, and that is a very scary prospect,' the former Obama-era official added. Trump repeatedly rejected Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Tulsi Gabbard's assessment of Tehran's nuclear capabilities amid the recent Israel-Iran military conflict and before the U.S. bombed three of Iran's major nuclear facilities over the weekend. 'Well, then my intelligence community is wrong,' the president told reporters Friday, when asked about Gabbard's assessment in March that Iran was not working to build a nuclear weapon. After Trump's rebukes, Gabbard updated her analysis to align with the president's. 'America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can't happen, and I agree,' she wrote in a post on social platform X. The Trump administration has also rejected the Defense Intelligence Agency's leaked initial assessment of the blow to Iran's nuclear capabilities following the U.S. strikes. 'There's no question that when the U.S. president makes a statement that our intelligence assessments are wrong and doesn't believe our own intelligence, that creates a very dangerous moment,' Panetta, who is 86 and retired, said in his interview with The i Paper. The former CIA director, who also previously served as Defense Secretary under then-President Obama, said the row raises questions about 'whether or not the U.S. will exercise the right kind of leadership in a dangerous world.' 'I have always been confident about our intelligence assessments with regards to Iran,' he said. 'The fundamental question is: did they make a decision to proceed with developing a weapon? And I think our intelligence indicates that that still was not the case.' The White House didn't immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment on the remarks.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump snipes at ‘fake news' CNN for asking about MAGA backlash to Iran, says his ‘supporters are more in love' with him now
Donald Trump once again tore into a CNN reporter for pressing him on Israel's war against Iran, fuming that the 'fake news' network never asks him any positive questions when he was pressed about the growing MAGA backlash to America's potential involvement in the conflict. During an impromptu Wednesday press conference on the White House lawn as he oversaw the installation of flagpoles, the president said he was still weighing whether the United States would join forces with Israel in its bombing campaign in Iran. Trump and his administration are currently considering striking underground Iranian nuclear facilities, which can only be destroyed by American-made bunker-busting bombs. 'You don't know that I'm going to even do it. You don't know. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do,' Trump scoffed at CNN White House reporter Alayna Treene's question about his plans. 'I can tell you this, that Iran's got a lot of trouble.' Trump's comments on Wednesday come as he's ramped up his threatening rhetoric towards Iran and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling for the nation's 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' while suggesting he can 'kill' Khamenei at any time as the United States 'knows exactly where' he's hiding. He also recently dismissed the assessment from his own director of National Intelligence – whom he's reportedly 'losing confidence' in – that Iran is currently not working towards a nuclear weapon. 'I don't care what she said — I think they were very close to having one,' he sneered at CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. 'We're not looking for a ceasefire, I didn't say it was going to be a ceasefire,' he further fumed at Collins, whom he has regularly insulted and attacked, before dismissing her as 'fake news.' Meanwhile, the president has come under fire from many of his most prominent supporters in the right-wing media ecosphere, who have taken him to task for appearing to backtrack on his promise to end America's involvement in 'forever wars.' Tucker Carlson, the undisputed leader of MAGA's isolationist wing, has called Trump 'complicit' in Israel's preemptive attack on Iran while warning the president that 'a full-scale war' would 'effectively end' his presidency. Trump, of course, has rhetorically fired back at his longtime ally, calling the former Fox News host 'kooky Tucker' and mockingly referencing the fact that Carlson is no longer on cable news. While still taking questions from the press on Wednesday, Trump bristled when Treene asked about the fracture among his base over the specter of another American-led war in the Middle East, prompting the president to personally attack the CNN reporter. 'Fake news! Fortunately nobody watches. Is anybody watching CNN nowadays? I haven't seen it in a long time,' Trump groused. 'But some of your supporters are wary of the U.S. getting involved in another war abroad,' Treene continued before the president cut her off. 'Do you ever ask a positive question at CNN? My supporters are more in love with me today, and I'm in love with them, more than they were even at election time,' Trump muttered before rambling on about his 'landslide' electoral victory. 'Did CNN report that?!' Brian Glenn, a correspondent for MAGA channel Real America's Voice who also happens to be Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend, then jumped in to gently frame Treene's question in a different way for the president. 'I think what she is alluding to is that the base is going to stay with you regardless,' Glenn said. 'But some of the people in the base don't want a long-term war. They're afraid we're going to get into a long-term war.' After promising that 'we're not going to have a long-term war,' the president asserted that he just wants to ensure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon while insisting that he's been consistent on this issue for the past 20 years. At the same time, he claimed that his approval rating is the highest it's ever been, especially among conservatives. 'So I may have some people who may be a little bit unhappy now, but I have some people who are very happy – people outside of the base who can't believe this is happening, they're so happy,' he declared. Of course, one of those unhappy campers happens to be Glenn's girlfriend, who has publicly sided with Carlson amid Trump's attack on the ex-Fox star, claiming that 'real America First/MAGA' do not want American involvement in foreign wars. 'Americans don't want to bomb Iran because the secular government of Israel says that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb any day now,' she tweeted at the president. 'And foreign wars/intervention/regime change put America last, kill innocent people, are making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction,' Greene wrote in another post. 'That's not kooky. That's what millions of Americans voted for. It's what we believe is America First.' As for the president's assertion that his approval ratings are soaring amid his Iran saber-rattling, an Economist/YouGov poll this week found that only 41 percent of Americans approved of the job he's doing, matching his second-term low. On top of that, only 16 percent of Americans think that the U.S. military should get involved in the war between Israel and Iran – including just 23 percent of Republicans.
