Did anyone expect the establishment media to applaud President Donald Trump’s decision to order strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran? Probably not. Maybe we could at least have hoped that anti-Trump news outlets would not go full Baghdad Bob and claim the historic raid was a failure. Yet that is exactly what CNN and The New York Times did with a little help from a hastily put together Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) damage assessment that was conveniently leaked to the cable news network in record time. But that media narrative has already crumbled as if it had also been hit by one of those Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) devices recently delivered – business end first – to the Islamic Republic.
On June 21, American B-2 stealth bombers, fighter jets, and a submarine hit three Iranian nuclear sites, deploying tomahawk missiles and several 30,000-pound GBU-57 MOPs, which had been designed over the course of many years specifically to destroy the very targets against which they were used. These are not only immensely powerful, but also extremely sophisticated munitions.
If these Iran strikes – dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer – went off exactly as planned, then the three targeted facilities would indeed have been obliterated, as President Trump has claimed. The US military was hardly going to spend years planning such an attack – and creating munitions specially for it – with the objective being anything less than complete destruction.
That’s almost certainly why the president claimed that the sites hit were “completely and totally obliterated.” If the MOPs and missiles were right on target and performed exactly the way they were designed, then Trump’s assessment of the result would have been correct.
However, the president doesn’t know the exact extent of the damage. Neither does the DIA, the CIA, Israeli intelligence, or even the Iranians. It is certainly possible that Trump’s announcement was overly optimistic. Much of the critical infrastructure at the sites, the uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre, were buried deep underground. It will be several weeks, at least, before anyone is able to accurately claim they have completed a thorough assessment of the damage.
As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remarked at a recent Pentagon press briefing, “If you want to know what’s going on at Fordow, you better go there and get a big shovel.”
Claims About Iran Strikes Simply Not Credible
This didn’t stop CNN from running with anonymous sources supposedly citing a DIA assessment that suggests “the US set [Iran] back maybe a few months, tops.” Some of the claims made by CNN’s sources cannot be taken seriously, given the raw intelligence they have at this point, which can only consist of satellite imagery and perhaps signals intelligence – that is, intercepted communications between Iranian officials.
Those officials would be aware that US intelligence is monitoring them, so they would likely have downplayed the extent of the destruction. Plus, they were no doubt thinking about how quickly they may lose their heads, should they give away too much about the toll taken by American bombs. CNN reported:
“Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely ‘intact.’ Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.”
How could they possibly know all this, so soon after the attack? There is no way to know that none of Iran’s uranium was destroyed. Suggesting that several hundred pounds of enriched uranium was moved before the raid – no small feat and one that could hardly have been done without US intelligence noticing – implies Iran knew ahead of time about the attack.
Multiple US, UN, and Israeli agencies have confirmed that the strikes caused significant damage, at least. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during an interview with state TV, conceded, "the level of damage is high, and it’s serious damage."
If the destruction was not indeed extensive, no senior Iranian government official would have dared make such an admission. Saving face on the world stage is far too important to the mullahs in Tehran. In fact, it is remarkable that Araghchi went even that far – which suggests, perhaps, that the regime itself is sailing through turbulent waters.
Low Confidence Media Cite Low Confidence Report
Here’s the thing about that DIA report: It was marked “preliminary” and “low confidence.” That latter label is important. “Low confidence” is Intelligence Community speak for speculation based on what little we are working with and almost certainly subject to change.
When media figures try to defend a shockingly bad or deceptive piece of reporting by twisting the truth, the jig is up. Secretary Hegseth pointed out the report cited by CNN was “a top-secret report; it was preliminary; it was low confidence.” Hosts at the network then bizarrely claimed vindication, suggesting the Department of Defense boss had corroborated their own reporting. CNN’s Kate Bolduan claimed:
“Despite the emotional speech and outrage from the defense secretary, what he said about the DIA assessment is what CNN reported on. His issue that he took about it being preliminary, about it being low confidence, CNN reported on all of this – I was looking back, just to make sure that we had it all… “
Bolduan’s assertions are patently false. The original CNN article, on which Natasha Bertrand was the lead writer, did not even once mention that the DIA assessment was either “preliminary” or “low confidence.” The report has since been “updated” in an attempt by the network to cover its tracks, but the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters website retrieved the original version.
During the Trump era, we have been here before. Anonymous Deep State operatives or former Intelligence Community figures feeding the anti-Trump media as they share a common goal to sabotage a president for whom they harbor an almost pathological hatred. There was the Russia collusion hoax, the Zelensky phone call that led to an impeachment, the Hunter Biden laptop falsely portrayed as a Russian disinformation plot. This attempt to negate the success of the Iran strikes is a case of déjà vu all over again. Only, this time, the deception was so shoddy that it took just a week to collapse.
We have no way of knowing, yet, how long it will take Iran to rebuild its nuclear weapons development program, as it will surely strive to do. The way things are going, it may take even longer for the American establishment media to repair its credibility.
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