Trump
officials cite ‘new intelligence’ to back president’s claims of success in
strikes on Iran
Tulsi
Gabbard and the CIA director say Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘destroyed’, amid
reports of White House efforts to limit sharing of classified information with
Congress
Guardian
staff and agencies
Thu 26 Jun
2025 04.39 BST
Donald
Trump’s administration ratcheted up its defence of the US’s weekend attacks on
Iran, citing “new intelligence” to support its initial claim of complete
success and criticising a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested
Tehran’s nuclear programme had been set back by only a few months.
The growing
row came amid reports that the White House will to try to limit the sharing of
classified documents with Congress, according to the Washington Post and the
Associated Press.
“This was a
devastating attack, and it knocked them for a loop,” Trump said on Wednesday,
apparently backing away from comments he’d made earlier in the day, that the
intelligence was “inconclusive”.
Senior Trump
officials publicly rejected the leaked initial assessment of the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) which concluded key components of the nuclear
programme were capable of being restarted within months. 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,” she said.
CIA director
John Ratcliffe in a statement said that new intelligence from a “historically
reliable” source indicated that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were
destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
During a
news conference at the Nato summit, Trump briefly ceded the stage to defence
secretary Pete Hegseth, who lashed out at the media and claimed reporters were
using the leaked intelligence assessment to politically damage Trump. “They
want to spin it to try to make him look bad,” he said.
In the wake
of the leaked DIA report, the White House will reportedly to try to limit the
sharing of classified documents with Congress, a senior official told the
Associated Press.
Democratic
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the reported decision to limit
information sharing, saying “senators deserve information, and the
administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what
is happening right now abroad”.
Classified
briefings for lawmakers had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday, but were
postponed, prompting outrage from members of Congress. The briefings are now
expected to take place on Thursday and Friday.
The leaked
DIA assessment also found that much of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched
uranium, which would provide the fuel for making any future nuclear warhead,
had been moved before the strikes and may have been moved to other secret
nuclear sites maintained by Iran. That claim was backed up by the UN nuclear
watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – which said it lost
“visibility” of the material when “hostilities began”.
However, in
an interview with French television, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi said:
“I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been lost or hidden.”
On
Wednesday, the White House pushed back on those claims, with press secretary
Karoline Leavitt telling Fox News the US had “no indication that that enriched
uranium was moved prior to the strikes, as I also saw falsely reported”.
“As for
what’s on the ground right now, it’s buried under miles and miles of rubble
because of the success of these strikes on Saturday evening,” she said.
The US
military said it dropped 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs – powerful 13,600kg
(30,000lb) weapons – on three Iranian nuclear sites. Since the attacks, Trump
has repeatedly claimed that the sites were “obliterated”.
The White
House highlighted an Israeli statement that Iran’s nuclear efforts were delayed
by years, while a spokesperson for the Iranian foreign ministry also said the
facilities have suffered significant damage.
On Wednesday
evening, Trump said that Hegseth – whom he dubbed “war” secretary – would hold
a news conference at 8am EST on Thursday to “fight for the dignity of our great
American pilots”, referring to the pilots of the B2 bombers that carried out
the strikes. He said that “these patriots were very upset” by “fake news”
reports about the limited impact of the strikes.
As the row
grew over how much the strikes set back Tehran’s nuclear programme, diplomatic
efforts to prevent Iran from rebuilding the programme also gathered pace.
Trump said
US and Iranian officials would meet soon, resuming a dialogue that was
interrupted by the nearly two week war, even as he suggested that negotiations
were no longer necessary.
“I don’t
care if I have an agreement or not,” Trump said, because Iran was too badly
damaged to even consider rebuilding its programme. “They’re not going to be
doing it anyway. They’ve had it.”
The IAEA has
rejected an “hourglass approach” involving different assessments of how many
months or years it would take Iran to rebuild, saying it distracts from finding
a long-term solution to an issue that had not been resolved.
“In any
case, the technological knowledge is there and the industrial capacity is
there. That, no one can deny. So we need to work together with them,” Grossi
said, adding that his priority was the return of IAEA inspectors to the nuclear
sites, the only way he said they could be properly assessed.
Meanwhile,
Iranian authorities are pivoting from their ceasefire with Israel to
intensifying an internal security crackdown across the country with mass
arrests, executions and military deployments, according to officials and
activists.
Iran’s
intelligence services have arrested 26 people, accusing them of collaborating
with Israel, state media Fars news agency reported.
Some in
Israel and exiled opposition groups had hoped the 12-day military campaign,
which targeted Revolutionary Guards and internal security forces as well as
nuclear sites, would spark a mass uprising and the overthrow of the Islamic
Republic.
While
numerous Iranians expressed anger at the government, there has been no sign yet
of any significant protests against the authorities.
With the
Associated Press and Reuters
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