Late in the day Tuesday, CNN breathlessly ran their favorite story since the Trump-Musk bromance hit the skids.
“Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say.”
CNN’s “reporters” could barely contain their excitement that their nightmare scenario was over: Trump, it appeared, hadn’t pulled off the most impressive military strike since “Operation Desert Fox.” (“Desert Fox” was a 1998 anti-WMD mission, also used Tomahawks for support, but used 600 sorties to target almost 100 targets in Iraq. And as with “Operation Midnight Hammer,” not a single U.S. service member or vehicle was lost.)
Citing unnamed sources (surprise, surprise — but we’ll be magnanimous and mention that they did at least tell us there were seven of them), CNN claimed a Defense Intelligence Agency report’s findings were “at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes ‘completely and totally obliterated’ Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.”
“So the [DIA] assessment is that the U.S. set them back maybe a few months, tops,” one member of CNN’s septet of sources said, also claiming that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and centrifuges were mostly “intact.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wasted no time in taking apart the leaker and CNN:
This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as “top secret” but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The 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 Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.
(Go get ‘em, K-Dawg! It will be decades until we see a press secretary that rivals your grasp of the issues, fearlessness, delightful aggression, and vivacity.)
Was “Operation Midnight Hammer” a huge success?
Soon after CNN published its report, the New York Times published a similar piece, also radiating scorching delight in anything that might bring Trump down a peg or two.
Two details, however, immediately undermine not just their “reporting” but also their credibility. (I know, how can something at the rock bottom of believability be undermined? All I can say is that CNN and the NYT found a way.)
First, it turns out that that while that little DIA was top secret, it was also categorized as “low confidence.” For those of you not familiar with the complex inner workings of American spycraft, “low confidence” means the government’s confidence in the intel’s reliability is … low. Gosh, it seems like that’s something that CNN, “The Most Trusted Name in News,” and the New York Times, America’s “paper of record,” might have mentioned. Alas, no. After all, there’s only so much room in a politically motivated hit piece designed to undermine a president whose approval numbers remain high. Adding in those two little words “low confidence” would obviously put both news organizations over their word limits.
The second detail is perhaps more damning. The CNN piece’s byline listed a trio of crack reporters: Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen. That first name might not ring a bell, but it would if we didn’t have to continually keep track of a nearly infinite number of lying journalists.
You see, Natasha Bertrand isn’t just any lying journalist (you can lie by omission just as well as by commission — like when you leave out the words “low confidence” to mislead your readers). She’s the lying journalist who single-handedly launched the widespread suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and she did it three weeks before the 2020 election, arguably helping to steal the election from Trump. We know that because researchers later found that when asked if knowledge of the laptop would have changed their votes, enough Democrats said “yes” that Biden’s lead would have collapsed, swinging the election to Trump.
Bertrand was the Politico reporter who published the infamous 51 former senior intel officials say the Hunter Biden laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” letter.
(Smarmier wording could hardly have been used. “All the classic earmarks”? Russian “information”? They made sure to say everything that could protect Hunter without saying anything that could come back to bite themselves. Smarmy.)
And what did the doe-eyed Ms. Bertrand get for helping mislead the entire nation? Shortly after her grand snow job, Forbes plopped Bertrand on their “30 Under 30 2021 Media List.” She did the dirty work the Swamp needed done, and the Swamp duly rewarded her.
The fact that Bertrand was involved and that she, her co-authors, and the Times all managed to leave out the single most relevant part of the DIA report — that it was “low confidence” — should shatter any trust we might have in this reporting.
The question remains, however, what else did they leave out? It turns out the answer is “quite a few things that are extremely relevant,” which they might have learned had they not rushed to print.
Tuesday the New York Post reported that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said new satellite photos show additional damage beyond what the agency found in the first batch of satellite photos — presumably the only ones the DIA had access to.
David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, knows more about the Iranian nuclear program than most people on the planet will ever know. Tuesday Albright wrote, “One change today, after the completion of the DIA report, is intelligence evidence that more enriched uranium stocks are in the rubble than believed just yesterday.”
Well, that undermines the reported DIA claim that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was mostly intact.
Albright continued, “Damage to Iran’s three known enrichment facilities, the destruction of Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing capabilities, its uranium conversion facility, uranium metal production plant, and other facilities involved in its nuclear weaponization process, reconstituting these capabilities will take significant time, investment, and energy to return to its previous state before the war or build nuclear weapons. Iran has likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Moreover, there has been considerable damage to Iran’s ability to build the nuclear weapon itself.”
And there goes the DIA’s centrifuge claim.
Albright additionally made the points that negotiations with Iran weren’t going anywhere and that the strikes will further deter Iran.
Insufferably outspoken leftist Cenk Uygur even attacked the DIA report, writing, “There’s a new bulls*** leak about how we didn’t destroy Iran’s facilities enough. That means Israel is not done with this war. 99% of the time those types of leaks are either fake intelligence from Israel or a neocon leaking speculative evidence to say we should go back into war.”
Megyn Kelly agreed with Uyger and also offered the idea that the leak could be from someone on the inside who hates Trump. Kelly’s suggestion also squared with Leavitt’s assessment that the leak came from “a loser” in the intel community.
Perhaps the most insightful comments, though, came from Seth Mandel at Commentary.
The only way it is correct to say that Iran would be able now to sprint to a bomb in six months is if nothing else changes. That would mean Israel would be rolling up up its spy network in Iran, would not be patrolling the skies above the country, and the U.S. satellites wouldn’t be watching. It would also mean Iran doing nothing at the bargaining table to satisfy Trump. Perhaps the Iranians will be stubborn and obnoxious. But that won’t mean the Israelis will end their surveillance and stand down forever — and will only encourage the U.S. to supply every piece of intelligence it can garner.
He’s right. Trump went into this saying, “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” The strikes assured that that possibility is farther out of their reach. How far out of reach is a relevant question, but not one that will determine the success of “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
Iran has now been denuded of its defenses, its leaders are literally hiding in caves, its people want to revolt, its terror proxies have been neutralized, its reputation has been diminished to nearly nothing, and it just lost to Donald Trump its last, best bargaining chip — the nearing acquisition of nuclear weapons.
At the same time Israel is safer right now than it has been since its (re)inception in 1947, the “12 Days War” has ended (hopefully), Russia has lost its last regional client, one of China’s largest oil suppliers is in chaos, and both Russia and China are desperately trying and failing to recalibrate every Trump-related scenario they have.
By any — any — measurement “Operation Midnight Hammer” was an astonishing success for Israel, America, and Trump. And ultimately its the success of those three entities that CNN, the New York Times, and the institutional left can’t stand.
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