President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday both tried to counter a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment that the attack on three Iranian nuclear facilities did limited damage by claiming news accounts of the report demeaned the B-2 pilots who dropped the bombs.
Speaking at a news conference as he was set to leave the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump claimed the pilots are “devastated” by the suggestion the strikes were not a complete success.
He was asked several times Wednesday about the Defense Intelligence Agency’s initial assessment that the bombings of the Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo facilities likely set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months. He acknowledged the receipt of the report but noted it was incomplete.
He snapped back at reporters raising questions about it, repeating his claim Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated,” and shifted the focus to the pilots who carried out the strike.
“You should be praising those people instead of trying to find out by getting me by trying to go and get me. You’re hurting those people,” Trump told reporters.
Later Wednesday, in a Truth Social post, he said Hegseth would hold a news conference Thursday morning “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.”
“They felt terribly! Fortunately for them and, as usual, solely for the purpose of demeaning PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” he said in part. “The News Conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable.”
The president claimed in his Netherlands news conference that he had received a call from Missouri, where the pilots are based, about the intelligence report and the news accounts about it, saying he had been told they were “devastated, because they were trying to minimize the attack.”
“I spoke to one of them. He said, ‘Sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead on,’ because they don’t understand fake news,” Trump said.
The Pentagon referred questions from ABC News to the White House.
Trump added about the pilots that “they were devastated. They put their lives on the line.”
Since Saturday’s attack, Trump and his officials have repeatedly praised the B-2 pilots for the mission but stepped up referencing them as part of the pushback on Wednesday. Hegseth, standing next to Trump, came to the microphone to argue news reporters and outlets “don’t care what the troops think.”
“These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom,” Hegseth said.
At the same time, Hegseth and Trump downplayed the report’s initial findings about the damage.
“The report said what it said and it was fine. It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. They shouldn’t have issued a report until they did, but we’ve got the information,” Trump said.
Trump earlier cited an Israeli intelligence report that he insisted assessed the “strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable.”
Military officials have said there is no doubt the sites sustained significant damage, but that a “battle damage assessment” would take time to complete, as no Western officials have been able to personally inspect the sites as of Wednesday.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement posted on X late Wednesday that “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” and also slamming the news media. A source with knowledge of Gabbard’s assessment told ABC News her description came from new U.S. intelligence.
“The propaganda media has deployed their usual tactic: selectively release portions of illegally leaked classified intelligence assessments (intentionally leaving out the fact that the assessment was written with “low confidence”) to try to undermine President Trump’s decisive leadership and the brave servicemen and women who flawlessly executed a truly historic mission to keep the American people safe and secure,” she posted in part.
Hegseth contended that the preliminary reports and images spoke for themselves.
“So, if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordo, you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated and somebody somewhere is trying to leak something to say, ‘Oh, with low confidence we think maybe it’s moderate,” he claimed.
-ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson, Kelsey Walsh and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
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