There’s a debate raging right now about the effectiveness of the strikes that Israel and the U.S. inflicted on Iran. It stems from a CNN article that claims in its headline, “Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.”
The article, from reporters Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen, begins:
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.
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.
This article quotes these unnamed sources as claiming that the strikes only temporarily damaged Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It’s all an effort to discredit President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Naturally, we shouldn’t expect anything less from CNN.
However, Israeli intelligence, which is much closer to the situation than any Washington “sources” who would run their mouths to CNN, says that, while the U.S. strike may not have totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, it set the Islamic Republic back “several years.”
The Israeli intelligence assessment is constantly being updated and refined, and a more concrete understanding of the status of Iran’s nuclear program will be available in the coming weeks, the senior Israeli official says.
The Israeli official argues that the military strikes were still worthwhile because the negotiations that the US had previously been pursuing with Iran would not have been able to achieve such results.
Moreover, the strikes on the nuclear program along with other military targets in Iran will serve as a deterrent against the Islamic Republic again trying to enrich uranium.
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Two words in that CNN report prove to be especially problematic: Natasha Bertrand. Does her name ring a bell? If it does, it’s probably because she was the reporter behind the claim that the New York Post report about Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.
Erick Erickson hit the nail on the head when he wrote on Tuesday:
I think you cannot process her current story based on anonymous deep state sources without also processing that she was the reporter the Biden Team used to discredit the truth when it came to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
What do you think is more likely?
The attack did not set back Iran or anti-Trump bureaucrats are trying to make a successful attack look bad to discredit the President and the military.
It’s not hard to imagine that since Bertrand was willing to push the Biden campaign’s propaganda to try to defeat Trump in 2020, she would be willing to do all she can to discredit Trump’s success in 2025. After all, if she proved untrustworthy once, why wouldn’t she show herself to be unreliable again?
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