Senate Republicans pushed back against a leaked report that President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran did not obliterate the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, but still wanted more information on the full extent of the damage done to the key facilities.
A widely reported ‘low confidence’ assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) suggested that the weekend strikes, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Trump has remained firm that the sites were ‘totally obliterated,’ and the White House has strongly pushed back against the report. And both the Israeli and Iranian governments agree that the sites were badly damaged.
Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee told Fox News Digital that they were confident in the president’s assessment and pushed back against the DIA’s findings.
‘First of all, one of the things I’d consider is the DIA said that Ukraine would be wiped out in three days,’ Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Fox News Digital. ‘And second, whatever the damage to Fordow is, the damage to the [nuclear] capabilities of Iran are devastating.’
Cramer said that the effectiveness of the bombing, which was carried out by several B-2 bombers armed with bunker-busting bombs, could not be ‘overstated,’ and warned that lingering questions surrounding the effectiveness of the operation were just ‘fodder for political discussion.’
‘I think the mission was accomplished,’ he said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., had not yet read the report, but called the DIA’s finding and subsequent news reports ‘bogus.’ Wicker’s sentiment came just after Senate Republicans met behind closed doors with Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter.
‘We just spoke to the Israeli ambassador to the United States just a few moments ago, and his assessment is that their capability has been destroyed for years,’ Wicker said.
Still, just how damaged the nuclear facilities are, particularly the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant buried deep under layers of rock, is a question lawmakers want answered and believe would only come from a true boots-on-the-ground assessment.
Senators are set to receive a briefing Thursday afternoon from Trump officials on the strikes, and expect to learn more about the true extent of the damage.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital that he’d seen all the evidence and there was not ‘an inconsistency’ between the president’s assertions and the materials he had seen.
He said that the briefing would allow lawmakers ‘a chance from multiple sources to glean what’s actually down deep underneath,’ but noted that until more clear information was available, absolute confirmation of the total damage wrought by the bombs was not complete.
Whether another strike should be authorized should further intelligence show that the program was not fully destroyed, Rounds said, ‘another strike depends on what the other options would be.’
‘I don’t think you ever take anything off the table for the president, but there might be other ways of handling it as well, because we’ve really opened that place up now,’ he said.
