[ad_1]
United States President Donald Trump has insisted that the military strikes he ordered on Iranโs nuclear facilities on Sunday morning โcompletely obliteratedโ Iranโs uranium enrichment capabilities.
And after an initial classified US intelligence report contradicted that assertion, Trump and his administration have lashed out at those who leaked the document and the media that has covered it โ throwing out its assessment.
The standoff between Trump and the evaluation of sections of his own intelligence community continued through Wednesday at The Hague, where the US president was attending the NATO summit and was asked several questions about the leaked document.
Yet it was only the latest instance of Trump publicly disagreeing with US intelligence conclusions during his past decade in politics โ whether on Russia or North Korea, Venezuela or Iran.
Hereโs what the latest spat is about, and Trumpโs long history of disputing intelligence assessments:
What is Trumpโs latest disagreement with US intelligence about?
On June 21, the US joined Israel in its strikes against Iran. US forces hit Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, three Iranian nuclear sites, with a range of missiles and bunker-buster bombs.
Trump applauded the success of the US attacks on Iran multiple times. โIranโs key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,โ he said in a televised address from the White House after the attack.
However, a confidential preliminary report by the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), suggested otherwise.
The DIA report said the US attacks had only set Iranโs nuclear programme back by less than six months.
The report added that in the DIAโs assessment, Iran had moved its stockpile of enriched uranium before the strikes, something Tehran has also claimed. As a result, little of the material that Iran could in theory enrich to weapons-grade uranium had been destroyed.
On Tuesday, the White House rejected the findings of the intelligence report. โThis alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as โtop secretโ,โ White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, describing the person who leaked the document as a โlow-level loser in the intelligence communityโ.
โThe leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iranโs nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,โ Leavitt added.
Trump also dismissed the report on Wednesday during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, continuing to claim that the US decimated Iranโs nuclear capabilities and denying claims that Tehran moved its enriched uranium. โI believe they didnโt have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast,โ Trump said, adding โit would have taken two weeks, maybe, but itโs very hard to remove that kind of materialโฆ and very dangerous.
โPlus, they knew we were coming,โ Trump added. โAnd if they know weโre coming, theyโre not going to be down there [in the underground sections of the nuclear facilities].โ
On Wednesday, the White House website published an article titled Iranโs Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated โ and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.
Besides Trump, the article also quotes Israelโs Atomic Energy Commission, which has said that โthe devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the siteโs critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.โ Of Iranโs three major nuclear sites, Fordow is the hardest to reach for Israelโs missiles, as it is buried deep under a mountain โ which is why Israel successfully convinced the US to hit the facility with bunker-buster bombs.
Additionally, the White House article quotes the Trump-appointed US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, as saying: โThe operation was a resounding success. Our missiles were delivered precisely and accurately, obliterating key Iranian capabilities needed to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.โ
John Ratcliffe, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also diverged from the DIA report, saying the US had โseverely damagedโ Iranโs nuclear facilities.
In a statement published on the CIA website on Wednesday, Ratcliffe said: โCIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iranโs Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.โ
Yet Trumpโs track record of disputing intelligence assessments and distrusting the intelligence community runs much deeper than Iran.
Did Trump disagree with US intelligence during his first term?
Yes, multiple times, including:
In 2016, on Russian election interference
The US intelligence community, in July 2016, accused Putin of meddling in the US presidential election with the aim of helping Trump defeat Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
In November of that year, Trump won the election. His transition team rebuked intelligence reports that concluded that Russian hackers had covertly interfered in the election.
In a statement, the Trump transition team said: โThese are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.โ
In an interview in December 2016, Trump himself said: โI think itโs just another excuse. I donโt believe it.โ
He added that: โNobody really knows. And hacking is very interesting. Once they hack, if you donโt catch them in the act, youโre not going to catch them. They have no idea if itโs Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. They have no idea.โ
In 2018, again on Russian election interference
In July 2018, the US indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers, accusing them of being involved in โactive cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential electionsโ, according to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This indictment was part of a probe into allegations of collusion between the Trump team and Russia before the 2016 election, being led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
That same month, Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki for a joint summit. During a joint news conference after the two leaders had a one-on-one private discussion, Trump backed Putin on the Russian leaderโs insistence that the Kremlin did not meddle in the 2016 election.
โI have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,โ Trump said.
โHe just said itโs not Russia. I will say this: I donโt see any reason why it would be.โ
Trump also said the Mueller investigation was a โdisaster for our countryโ and drove a wedge between Washington and Moscow, the โtwo largest nuclear powers in the worldโ.
Former CIA Director John Brennan called Trumpโs statements during the news conference โnothing short of treasonousโ. Trump later pulled Brennanโs security clearances. Those clearances give select former officials access to classified information and briefings.
In 2019, over Iran, North Korea and ISIL (ISIS)
In 2019, Trump again rebuked the intelligence community, disagreeing with them over multiple issues.
The US intelligence community, on January 29, 2019, told a Senate committee that the nuclear threat from North Korea remained and Iran was not taking steps towards making a nuclear bomb.
Intelligence agencies said they did not believe that Iran violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear deal signed between Iran and a group of countries led by the US in 2015. This, even though Trump had pulled out of the deal in 2018.
โThe Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!โ Trump wrote on X, then called Twitter.
โBe careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!โ Trump wrote in another X post.
On the other hand, US intelligence said North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear program.
On January 30, Trump contradicted this in an X post: โNorth Korea relationship is best it has ever been with US No testing, getting remains, hostages returned. Decent chance of Denuclearization.โ
During his first term, Trump engaged directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and in June 2019, met him at the fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas โ the first US president to travel there.
Meanwhile, US spy chiefs warned that the ISIL (ISIS) armed group would continue to launch attacks from Syria and Iraq against regional and Western adversaries, including the US.
That assessment was at variance with Trumpโs views. In December 2018, he withdraw 2,000 US troops from Syria on grounds that ISIL (ISIS) did not pose a threat any more. โWe have won against ISIS,โ he said in a video.
What did Trump and US intelligence clash over recently?
During his second term, too, Trump has differed with the intelligence communityโs conclusions on multiple occasions, including:
In April, over Venezuela
Trumpโs current term has been marked by an aggressive immigration crackdown. In March, he signed a proclamation invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trumpโs proclamation claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is โperpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursionโ against US territory.
The proclamation says all Venezuelan citizens aged 14 or older โwho are members ofโ the gang and are not naturalised or lawful permanent US citizens are liable to be restrained and removed as โAlien Enemiesโ.
In his proclamation, Trump said the Tren de Aragua โis closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro regime, including its military and law enforcement apparatusโ.
However, in April, a classified assessment from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an arm of the DNI, found there was no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government. The assessment found that the gang was not supported by Venezuelaโs government officials, including Maduro.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was the only one, among the 18 organisations that make up the US intelligence community, to disagree with the assessment.
In June, over Iranโs nuclear weapons
Onย March 25, Trumpโs DNI Gabbard unambiguously told US Congress members that Iran was not moving towards building nuclear weapons.
โThe IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003,โ Gabbard said.
On June 17, however, Trump told reporters he believed Iran was โvery closeโ to building nuclear weapons, after he made an early exit from the Group of Seven summit in Canada.
Trumpโs distrust for his own intelligence community is widely viewed as stemming from what he has described as a โwitch-huntโ against him โ the allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win.
During the 2018 news conference in Helsinki, Trump said: โIt was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily.โ
[ad_2]
Source link
