Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that establishment media outlets “cheer against the efficacy of” the strikes on Iran because they do not want to see Trump succeed.
Hegseth blasted reporters at a press conference at the Pentagon Thursday morning, on the heels of a report from CNN that questioned the effectiveness of the strikes based on anonymously-sourced descriptions of an “early US intelligence assessment.”
“Because you want him not to be successful so bad you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes, you have to hope ‘maybe they weren’t effective, maybe the way the Trump administration is representing them isn’t true,’” he said.
Hegseth, who went through a litany of intelligence reports from American and Israeli intelligence officials about the effectiveness of the strikes, added that the establishment press has spun “half-truths” and “leaked information” in every way possible in an effort to “cause doubt and manipulate … the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful.”
Hegseth’s press conference with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine comes as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, told Radio France Internationale that Iran’s nuclear program “suffered enormous damage,” according to a translation of the interview.
He also noted that the centrifuges at Fordow were “no longer operational.”
Caine said during the press conference that each of the six GBU-57 MOPs, or “bunker busters,” dropped “at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go.”
“A bomb has three effects that causes damage: blast, fragmentation, and overpressure. In this case, the primary kill mechanism in the mission space was a mix of overpressure and blast, ripping through the open tunnels and destroying critical hardware,” he said.
“The majority of the damage we assessed based on our extensive modeling was a blast layer, combined with the impulse, extending from the shock. Imagine what this looks like six times over,” he added.
Trump lauded Hegseth and Caine after the press conference.
“One of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences I have ever seen! The Fake News should fire everyone involved in this Witch Hunt, and apologize to our great warriors, and everyone else!” he wrote.
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