One day after strikes on Iran, Trump’s ‘totally obliterated’ claims come into question
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One day after strikes on Iran, Trump’s ‘totally obliterated’ claims come into question
Donald Trump says Iran’s nuclear sites have been “completely and totally obliterated” Peter Bergen says the phrase offers little nuance or wiggle room. Bergen: It raises the question of whether additional negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program would even be necessary. He asks: Is Trump, once again playing the role of President Bystander, distancing himself from the reliability of his assessment of the efficacy of the strike he ordered? The public cannot count on the American president for accurate information on profound national security matters, Bergen writes, even if he’s the president of the U.S., not the commander in chief. The strikes were a “spectacular military success,” he says, but it’s too early to know for sure if the sites were obliterated or if Iran will respond with retaliatory strikes or other actions in the future, he says. The damage to the Nuclear sites in Iran is said to be “monumental,’” Trump writes.
But as important as these questions are, and as necessary as it is to understand the answers to these lines of inquiry, there are also immediate, short-term considerations: Did these strikes work? Did they serve their intended purpose?
On Saturday night, the president delivered a televised address in which he sounded a triumphant note:
Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.
The phrase “completely and totally obliterated” did not offer much in the way of nuance or wiggle room. Hours after Trump’s remarks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a press conference at the Pentagon in which he used nearly identical phrasing: “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.”
Taken at face value, it suggested that the U.S. offensive was such a sterling success that Iran’s nuclear program effectively no longer existed. Indeed, it raised the question of whether additional negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program would even be necessary: If the country’s nuclear ambitions have been completely and totally obliterated, what’s left to talk about?
But it wasn’t long before the reliability of the president’s claim came into question.
At Hegseth’s Sunday morning press conference, for example, Gen. Dan Caine, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was “way too early” to offer a meaningful assessment of the damage done by U.S. strikes. Soon after, JD Vance appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” and when host Kristin Welker asked if the Iran nuclear sites had, in fact, been completely and totally obliterated, the vice president hedged, saying only that the U.S. offensive “substantially delayed [Iranians’] development of a nuclear weapon.”
Of course, the distance between totally obliterating a nuclear program and delaying the advancement of a nuclear program is enormous. As The New York Times summarized, “A day after President Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated” by American bunker-busting bombs and a barrage of missiles, the actual state of the program seemed far more murky, with senior officials conceding they did not know the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.”
In case this isn’t obvious, Trump’s comment was not an off-the-cuff observation made during an unscripted gaggle. Rather, the president, reading from his trusted teleprompter, delivered a specific and pre-written message to the nation and the world about an unexpected U.S. military operation in the Middle East.
One of his key assessments about the success of that mission was called into question, not weeks after its completion, but within hours of his remarks.
By late Sunday afternoon, Trump turned to his social media platform to argue, “The damage to the Nuclear sites in Iran is said to be ‘monumental.’” Almost immediately, however, the wording stood out as bizarre: The damage is “said to be” significant? By whom? The U.S. intelligence agencies that the president doesn’t believe? Was Trump, once again playing the role of President Bystander, distancing himself from the reliability of his assessment of the efficacy of the strike he ordered?
To be sure, it is possible that the Iranian sites were obliterated. For now, however, neither Trump nor anyone else seems to know for sure — which matters for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the unnerving fact that the public cannot count on the American president for accurate and trustworthy information, even on profound matters related to national security.