Key Points and Summary – At a Pentagon briefing on Thursday, June 26, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine forcefully defended the success of the recent US strike on Iran’s nuclear sites while notably avoiding confirming President Trump’s claim that the program was “obliterated.”
-Both men deferred questions about the specific battle damage assessment to the intelligence community.
-The briefing grew tense as Hegseth attacked the media for reporting on a leaked intelligence assessment that suggested a more limited impact, specifically lashing out at his former Fox News colleague, reporter Jennifer Griffin, accusing her of misrepresenting the president’s words.
Was the Iran Strike a Success? Top Generals Refer Questions to Intel Agencies
Just five days ago, the U.S. launched an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, after which President Donald Trump declared that the sites had been “obliterated.” In the days since, a preliminary Pentagon intelligence report published in the press has indicated that perhaps that wasn’t the case, and that the attack merely set back the Iranian nuclear program by months, rather than permanently.
The Trump Administration has since pushed back forcefully against that report, bashing both the reporters and news outlets that released it, and also criticizing whoever leaked the report, whom White House press secretary Katherine Leavitt bashed as “an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”
On Thursday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine held a Pentagon briefing where they talked about the strike and its aftermath, and notably, as pointed out by the New York Times, the two men steered clear of confirming the permanent damage the way Trump has.
Iran Nuclear Sites: “Obliterated”?
Secretary Hegseth and General Caine shared operational details of the Iran mission, as well as details about Iran’s subsequent retaliation against a U.S. base in Qatar.
However, they both avoided specifics about the status of the nuclear program; they referred such questions to the intelligence agencies.
“We don’t do [battle damage assessments]. I’ll refer that to the intelligence community,” Caine said in the briefing, per CNN.
“Ultimately, we’re here to clarify what these weapons are capable of,” Hegseth said in the briefing.
“No one’s under there able to assess and everyone’s using reflections of what they see,” the defense secretary added in the briefing. “That’s why the Israelis, the Iranians, the IAEA, the UN, to a man and to a woman who recognized the capability of this weapon system, are acknowledging how destructive it’s been.”
Caine also denied that he had been pressured by the White House to change an intelligence assessment about the Iran mission.
“No, no, I have not. And no, I would not,” the general said in the briefing.
“My job as the chairman is to offer a range of options to the president and the National Command Authority to deliver the risks associated with each of those and then take the orders of the National Command Authority and go execute them. This— I’ve never been pressured by the president or the secretary to do anything other than tell him exactly what I’m thinking, and that’s exactly what I’ve done,” Caine said.
Hegseth vs. The Press on Iran
In the days since the attack, and especially since the report about the strike possibly only delaying the program by months, President Trump has not only denied the report, but has repeatedly characterized such reporting as nothing less than a personal insult directed towards the pilots who carried out the mission.
He has also called for certain news reporters to be fired, declaring on Truth Social on Thursday that “FAKE NEWS REPORTERS FROM CNN & THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD BE FIRED, IMMEDIATELY!!! BAD PEOPLE WITH EVIL INTENTIONS!!!”
Hegseth struck a similar tone in the briefing on Thursday, bashing media members for reporting on that early Pentagon intelligence assessment. Hegseth also ripped the media for not reporting on the difficulty of refueling in mid-air, or of flying for 18 hours, but the media has reported on those things.
At one point in the briefing, Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin—Hegseth’s former colleague at that network — asked the defense secretary if he had “certainty” that all of the highly-enriched uranium remained at the Fordow site before the attack, and hadn’t been moved.
“Jennifer, you’ve been about the worst,” Hegseth said. “The one who misrepresents the most intentionally, what the president says.”
Griffin defended herself after that volley.
“I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I, I take issue with that,” the Fox News reporter said.
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