Is the deep state going Monty Python on us? In response to President Trump's spectacular bunker-busting bombing of Iran's nuclear weapons capacities, Democrats, and the mainstream media have been quick to claim that actually, nothing really happened, and Iran would be up and running again in just a few months.
According to Byron York, a credible reporter at the Washington Examiner, it's deep state spin promoted by its usual handmaids in the media and it's falling apart:
EARLY IRAN BOMB DAMAGE SPIN FALLS APART. You know the basics of the story. After U.S. bombers hit Iranian nuclear sites, President Donald Trump quickly announced that the raid had “obliterated” the Iranian facilities. At that moment, some of Trump’s opponents in the Democratic Party, plus their allies in the media, said no, no, no. The U.S. bombing didn’t obliterate anything. Instead, it did minimal damage — so minimal that the Iranian program could be up and running again in a “handful of months.”
CNN, relying on leaks from people “briefed on” a super-early Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, was first to report that the bombing not only did not destroy the “core components” of Iran’s nuclear program, it likely “only set it back by months.” NBC, relying on leaks from the same DIA report, and perhaps the same people, reported the U.S. bunker-busting bombs “were not as effective as President Donald Trump said and that they set the program back by only three to six months.” And the New York Times’s version of the story said the early DIA report “estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.”
York is right that it certainly was a fast, right out-the-gate analysis. How would any of these deep staters really know it was a useless strike? York points out that the argument focuses on the metallization plants that are now obliterated. No metallization, no nuclear weapons.
But we also know they all hate Trump and are supremely motivated to deny him any capacity to claim victory. And if they're taking their analysis from their buddies the mullahs or their agents, well, cui bono? Of course the mullahs would like the U.S. to think they are still big and powerful, now that they have a lot of big holes in the ground where their precious nuclear weapons baby once grew. York cites a Defense Intelligence Agency report that has got them all excited failed to mention which parts of Iran's bomb-making project could be rebuilt quickly. Seems the deep-staters there are abundant spinners, or else have an Iranian Ana Montes among them.
And it was quick and cheap spin, which set off York's antennae. After all, when President Bill Clinton bombed a Sudanese aspirin factory in the famous 'hit the camel on the butt' strike to deflect from his Monica Lewinsky problems, the analysis didn't come out until several weeks later. This analysis was instant, recalling the famous combat scene from Monty Python:
Actor Graham Chapman, who plays King Arthur, is reduced to trying to reason with the Black Knight, played by actor John Cleese, that he won the combat, while the armless Cleese keeps kicking Chapman with what's left of his legs, insisting he's won.
That's Trump and the mullahs, whose allies in the deep state and press would have you think the Black Knight has won.
As York notes:
It is important to say that it is still too early for any sort of final assessment of the damage. But it might not be too early to say that the Defense Intelligence Agency report that got all the anti-Trump voices so excited perhaps did not specify “which part of [Iran’s] nuclear infrastructure could be quickly rebuilt,” in the words of the New York Times. Some reporters, eager to debunk Trump and pronounce Trump’s action a failure, paid a lot of attention to reports that Iran managed to keep some enriched uranium but failed to ask whether Iran could still manufacture a nuclear bomb.
Of course that didn’t stop the partisans from jumping into the story. “Listen, to me it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), perhaps one of the most aggressive of the second-term Trump antagonists. “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.”
Even as Murphy spoke, it was becoming clear that a variety of assessments and analyses, looking at the entire Iranian nuclear weapons program, suggested the damage was far, far more extensive than the Democrat said. Was the Iranian program “obliterated”? Argue about the word if you like. But the damage inflicted by the U.S. and Israeli attacks appears to have been devastating.
What a bunch of jackasses.
Image: Pat Loika, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed
