I just heard President Trump at his press conference, rambling as only he can, declare that the news outlets claiming his surprise bunker-busters attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not as effective as the U.S. claimed were “losers” and liars. Meanwhile, a CNN article, followed by the New York Times, citing leaked classified documents, and thus unnamed sources of those illegally retrieved materials, announced that “Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.” Reporters Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen wrote that “the US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by four people briefed on it.” It continued, “The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.”
“One of the anonymous sources.” Hey, I’m convinced! No, this proves one thing only: the Deep State trying to undermine the Trump administration is still a thing, if weakened.
Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence, which should be closer to the situation than Washington’s unrevealed “sources,” says that, while the U.S. strike may not have totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, it set the Islamic Republic back “several years.” Years? Months? Days?
The CNN original article did not mention that the assessment was of “low confidence.” Oh. Now the current version does. The allegedly corroborating article from the Times reported, “The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.” Whose “early findings?” The Iranians themselves sealed the tunnels prior to the bombing raids. As for centrifuges, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has guessed, “Given the explosive payload utilized and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.” Other experts, have stated, “Overall, Israel’s and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program. It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack.”
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt furiously denied the CNN leak-based story, saying, “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret,’” but she’s a paid liar, so what does that mean? Natasha Bertand, one of the CNN story’s reporters. was an emphatic denier of the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Is she credible? Of course Fox News, constantly trying to boost its alumnus, Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary, has chosen to disdain the negative reports. The conservative media has headlines today like PJ Media’s “TikTok Meth Heads Have More Credibility Than CNN.”
Who does have credibility? There are also dueling polls, with the favored Axis polls “shockingly” showing that a majority of the public doesn’t approve of the U.S.’s mission….because, I assume, the polled group is choosing to believe different sources, with the President’s history of exaggeration and hyperbole making his claims about the mission’s “fantastic” success inherently dubious. Then there is the despicable Stephen Colbert, who treated the CNN story as fact, and gleefully danced for his audience because Trump had failed.
There is literally no source that can be trusted in the news media: bias or malice rules. It’s all dueling obfuscation, spin and propaganda. There is no one to trust, because no one should be trusted.
Now what?
Ethics Alarms 
So, the program is set back “months”. Is that three months? 36? 48?
We have no idea. The media (all media) has made itself unreliable because it frequently edits facts to suit its agenda.
Months.
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 etc.
20 years later…. “but we did say months, so we were technically correct.”
I have now begun using any news report to teach my children how to equivocate for the win or understand who is trying to manipulate you.
You are absolutely correct. I have no idea if we hit anything, hit anything substantive or have only stalled not wiped out Iran’s nuclear capability.
I have been thinking about this issue for a couple of days because I truly don’t know what to believe. President Trump could be exaggerating. He does that. He could be lying. He does that, too. The leaks are unethical but could be accurate…that has happened. They could be inaccurate or even falsified to make Trump look bad. That has happened, too. CNN and all the other media outlets rushing to report this news could be interpreting the information incorrectly either out of ignorance or malice. That has happened. If there was conclusive proof that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been destroyed, would they report it fairly or even at all?
There are precedents for all these things. I don’t know who to believe. Or what to believe.
I just know I can’t believe anything the news media reports because its filtered through their biases.
After the 2020 election, someone on Twitter (before it was X) posted a lengthy multi-part explanation for why conservatives were upset about the election. One line stuck out to me. Paraphrasing: They’ve (conservatives) always known that the news media was biased, but they always believed that, if the truth came out, the news media would have to report it. Now they don’t.”
That’s pretty much me these days.
Stop making me defend the media!
To be fair, the actual facts we’re wanting to learn are currently buried deep underground, in a far off land, where it is extremely dangerous to go. So how CAN we get a clear picture of what’s happened? Even the U.S. Intelligence Community, with the best satellite imaging technology in the world, can’t say for sure what the status is of the underground structures–not unless they can get someone inside who can survey it first-hand.
If they CAN do that, it’ll be classified Top Secret. I don’t just mean the survey itself; I mean the very fact that’s even possible for us to get such a survey will be Top Secret.
The media doesn’t really know anything unless they get a reporter there on the scene, which they haven’t and won’t. The DIA barely knows more but won’t ever say what they do know.
So all the media has to work with is this leak. It could be correct, it could be mistaken, it could be counterintelligence, it could be a partisan lie. Neither we nor the media know which it is and it’s just dishonest to pretend we do. But since it’s the media’s job to report what (little) they know, they report the leak. Of course they do.
So it really just comes down to this: Do we (the general public) have any clue regarding what the HIGHLY-classified results of the US bombing of the Iranian nuclear facilities are?
No. No we don’t.
And we won’t (at least not for a while).
And at this point in time that’s not only to be expected, but also exactly as it should be.
–Dwayne
The entire measure is wrong. Months until what? Months until they re-dig the access tunnels and make it operational again? There’s no way to determine if that is even feasible.
Months until they get another site operational? Months until existing purification facilities make up for the lost capacity?
Why are you measuring in months? What about costs? Were the losses to the Iranian government enough to deter unwanted behavior? Isn’t that a more meaningful measure than a calendar?
How does this compare to, and in conjunction with, Operation Narnia for example? How many months would you expect it to take for Iran to identify, train, and replace their lost scientists?
Natasha Bertrand? Didn’t she head up the “Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation” story for CNN? Pardon me if I’m skeptical.
Now now, it’s the message, not the messenger…
They all functioned.
Here is where I start surmising. The weapons impacted sequentially, with trajectories intersecting just above the gallery ceiling. The first fractures the rock, easing the way the following.
If the ceiling caves into the gallery, at least some centrifuges will be destroyed, releasing Uranium hexaflouride gas, which is extremely corrosive and toxic.
I think it extremely likely the centrifuge capacity was destroyed.
I dunno. From the satellite photos I saw, it looked like the whole mountain collapsed on the facilities. They may not have “obliterated” everything but considering the delicate nature of thes machines and the metric tons (tonnes?) of dirt resting comfortably on top of them it is gonna take a long time to dig them out.
jvb
On this matter, I tend to believe president Trump. This is because of satellite surveillance and Israeli intelligence, who have demonstrated a remarkable ability to operate inside of Iran.
I generally concur with the statements above regarding the actual damage accomplished by the strikes. I would like to add one further comment. One of my classmates headed up the development of the MOP, a multi-year project which not only developed a weapon, but war-gamed out to the nth degree how it might be used, including assessments of an attack on the facility in question. There were also live drops of the weapon as it was in development, as well as a thorough review of the bunker busters used in Gulf War I and in WWII and their effects. No longer employed in this capacity, he said that the satellite photos that he had reviewed from open sources were consistent with the weapons’ penetration and subsequent detonation in an underground cavity. I leave it to the group to guess the effects of ongoing detonations of 2 1/2 tons of explosive material in a confined space. But I think that’s as much certainty as we can get for a while.
This report was disturbing, to be sure. How is it possible to know who or what to believe? Basically it’s not.
But then, one other thing occurs to me. It appears that Israel was satisfied with the results of the bombings. Also, they have confirmed that they actually did have people on the ground inside Iran. They probably still do, but obviously haven’t said that.
To us, Iran having a nuke is a Bad Thing. To Israel, Iran having a nuke is a Really, Really, Bad, Horrible Thing. Literally existential.
So my thinking is that if Israel seems to think the nuclear program has been destroyed or crippled, that should be pretty good. They have, after all, done this sort of thing before.