President Donald Trump’s longstanding tensions with the U.S. intelligence community are resurfacing, this time over conflicting assessments of the impact of recent American airstrikes on Iran.
An early intelligence assessment concluded that Iran’s nuclear programme was only set back by a few months following last weekend’s strikes on three sites.
Trump, however, publicly rejected the findings, insisting that the programme was “completely and fully obliterated.”
The disagreement has set the stage for another high-profile standoff.
Top administration officials are expected to press Trump’s narrative at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.
Meanwhile, briefings for lawmakers on Capitol Hill had been scheduled, though the White House reportedly planned to limit the disclosure of classified information following a leak of the initial assessment.
“Intelligence people strive to live in a world as it is, describe the world as it is,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a 32-year intelligence veteran and former CIA chief of staff.
“Politicians are all about describing the world as they want it to be,” he added.
With the dispute now spilling into public view, it mirrors the broader pattern of Trump’s first term, where his foreign policy assertions often clashed with intelligence analysis, particularly during the Russia investigation.
