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Emerging from a highly anticipated classified briefing on Thursday, Democratic and Republican senators were not in agreement over exactly how much US strikes on Iran set back that country’s nuclear program.
Many Republicans said that they believe it will now take Iran years longer to build a nuclear weapon, though some acknowledged the threat is not completely neutralized. But Democrats said the picture is far less clear – and one said the US strikes set Iran back only by months.
According to an early US defense intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it, 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. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said a day later, however, that “a body of credible intelligence” indicated Iran’s nuclear program was “severely damaged” by the US strikes and that “several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
While it was not clear whether Ratcliffe was offering an official agency assessment or his view of the intelligence, it’s not unusual for intelligence agencies to disagree when making a judgment call about how to interpret raw reporting. The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is also ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early intel findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
“To me, it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months. There’s no doubt there was damage done to the program. But the allegations that we have obliterated their program just don’t seem to stand up to reason,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters.
“I just don’t think the president was telling the truth when he said the program was obliterated,” Murphy said, adding that he believed Iran still has “significant remaining capability.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, too, said that the briefing did not provide clear explanations to Trump’s assertions.
“President Trump said that the nuclear stockpile was completely and totally obliterated. I did not receive an adequate answer to that question,” Schumer told reporters, accusing the White House of having “no coherent strategy, no end game, no plan” for preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon in the future.
The classified briefing on Thursday was long awaited inside the Capitol, with senators of both parties eager for more information after the surprise attack by the US on Iran. A slate of top US officials spoke to senators: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director Ratcliffe. That group will also brief House members Friday morning.
Republican senators, including Trump’s top allies, left the briefing touting the effectiveness of the US strikes and — in some instances — echoing Trump’s precise language that it “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapon capacity.
“They were obliterated. Nobody can use them anytime soon,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s trusted national security advisers who had been pushing for this exact type of strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Inside the secure room in the Capitol basement, key details of the early Pentagon intelligence assessment — which was first reported by CNN — were read aloud to senators during the briefing, according to one attendee, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
“They walked through it and talked more about what it is and what exactly it says. I thought that answered a lot of questions,” said Hawley, who had been a vocal critic of US military intervention in the Iranian-Israeli conflict.
“Having listened to them now for an hour-plus walk through the intelligence and walk through what we know at this point, I think it’s very fair to say that this military mission accomplished its objective for what they intended to do,” Hawley said.
Other Republicans were more cautious in echoing Trump’s initial language or appeared to echo the CIA director’s assessment that it would take years to rebuild the nuclear facilities.
Asked if Iran’s facilities had been obliterated, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said: “I believe the goals of the mission were accomplished. I think that’s an ambiguous term, or could be interpreted different ways, so I would just say the goals of the mission were accomplished.”
Cornyn said it was unclear how long it might take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon, adding: “Well, I don’t think anybody’s been underground to assess the damage. So I don’t know if anyone can give you a precise number. I certainly can’t.”
Asked if the sites were obliterated, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said, “It’s all in your definition.” Asked for his definition, Scott repeated to reporters: “I think the military did an unbelievable job.”
But Sen. Tom Cotton, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, was more definitive. He said the strikes would “protect the world from the risk of an Iranian nuclear weapon for years.”
“I believe that this mission was a tremendous success and that we have effectively destroyed Iran’s nuclear program,” Cotton said, criticizing the focus on the early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm.
CNN has reported that the final US military “battle damage assessment” by the DIA could take days or even weeks to complete, multiple sources familiar with the Pentagon’s process told CNN. The initial DIA analysis was produced just 24 hours after the attack, according to one of the sources. Because it was only a preliminary analysis, its judgments were “low-confidence,” the sources said. It was not coordinated with the wider intelligence community, according to a US official, and the document itself acknowledged that it could take weeks to produce a finalized assessment.
Ratcliffe, meanwhile, added in his statement on Wednesday that the “CIA continues to collect additional reliably sourced information to keep appropriate decision-makers and oversight bodies fully informed.”
“I think that Iranian nuclear development is set back years,” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas told reporters after the briefing.
While a number of Democrats declined to weigh in at all on the briefing, Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, said the briefing Thursday was “constructive” even as he said the administration has more work to do to get a fuller assessment of the damages in his view.
“We do not have a complete assessment yet of the strikes of last week and when we do, I think that will answer a lot of currently unanswered questions,” Coons said.
Asked by how much he felt the Iranian nuclear program was set back by the strikes, Coons said, “we got more relevant details about that, but I think it is too early to actually fully grasp a number of critical and currently unanswered issues about what was exactly destroyed and exactly how long it would take to reconstruct it and what the intentions of the Iranian regime are.”
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, also gave a cautious assessment of the strikes.
“Clearly, damage was inflicted on the Iranian nuclear program,” Warner said, though he added that “it is going to take time to get a final assessment of how much damage.”
“The thing that I’ve had some concern about is when, people jump to a conclusion too early. I mean, clearly, the president making a comment on Saturday night, before any assessment of total obliteration – listen, I hope that is the final assessment. But if not, does that end up providing a false sense of comfort to the American people or for that matter, the world?” Warner said.
This story has been updated with additional information.
