{"id":154807,"date":"2025-06-26T19:20:59","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T19:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/pentagon-officials-defend-success-of-u-s-strikes-on-iran-amid-intel-leak-rebuking-press-coverage-of-attack-cbs-news\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T19:20:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T19:20:59","slug":"pentagon-officials-defend-success-of-u-s-strikes-on-iran-amid-intel-leak-rebuking-press-coverage-of-attack-cbs-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/pentagon-officials-defend-success-of-u-s-strikes-on-iran-amid-intel-leak-rebuking-press-coverage-of-attack-cbs-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon officials defend success of U.S. strikes on Iran amid intel leak, rebuking press&#039; coverage of attack &#8211; CBS News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Watch CBS News<br \/>           <time datetime=\"2025-06-26T12:59:00-0400\">Updated on:  June 26, 2025 \/ 12:59 PM EDT<\/time>           \/ CBS News         <br \/>General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday released video of the tests of the type of &#8220;bunker-buster&#8221; bombs that were dropped on <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/satellite-photos-iran-fordo-nuclear-before-after-us-strikes\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Iranian nuclear facilities<\/a><\/span> over the weekend as he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to illustrate the severity of the strikes amid the <span class=\"link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/cia-irans-nuclear-program-severely-damaged-trump-iran-strikes-fbi-probes-leak\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">leak of an initial intelligence report<\/a><\/span>.&nbsp;<br \/>Caine showed the video of a massive bomb striking an underground target at the joint press conference with Hegseth, saying it was the &#8220;culmination of over 15 years of development and testing.&#8221;&nbsp;<br \/>But Hegseth and Caine provided few new details about the impact of the strikes during the news conference.&nbsp; For his part, Hegseth devoted much of his remarks to the media, slamming its coverage of a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report that said an initial assessment suggested the strikes had only set back Iran&#8217;s nuclear program by months.&nbsp;<br \/>The Defense Intelligence Agency&#8217;s initial assessment, according to a senior DIA official, was considered to be a &#8220;preliminary, low confidence assessment.&#8221;<br \/>&#8220;This report acknowledges it&#8217;s likely severe damage,&#8221; Hegseth said. &#8220;Again, this is preliminary, leaked &mdash; because someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn&#8217;t successful.&#8221; But while Hegseth disputed the significance of the report&#8217;s conclusions, he did not deny that the leaked assessment was authentic.&nbsp;<br \/>Hegseth, after repeated questioning about whether any of the highly enriched uranium had been moved before the attack, said, &#8220;I&#8217;m not aware of any intelligence that I&#8217;ve reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be &mdash; moved or otherwise.&#8221;&nbsp;<br \/>When Fox News&#8217; Jennifer Griffin asked if the Pentagon had &#8220;certainty&#8221; that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordo mountain and hadn&#8217;t been moved, Hegseth responded by insulting her reporting.<br \/>&#8220;Jennifer, you&#8217;ve been about the worst &mdash; the one who misrepresents the most &mdash; intentionally,&#8221; Hegseth told her. &nbsp;<br \/>Griffin pushed back, telling Hegseth she had been the first to describe on Saturday night the B-2 bombers, the refueling and &#8220;the entire mission with great accuracy.&#8221;&nbsp;<br \/>Posting on Truth Social during the news conference, Mr. Trump criticized other news outlets, and wondered whether the New York Times and CNN &#8220;will be firing the reporters who made up the FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong. Lets see what happens?&#8221;<br \/>Mr. Trump and Hegseth have said using multiple 30,000 pound bombs &#8220;obliterated&#8221; Iran&#8217;s nuclear ambitions.&nbsp;<br \/>Since reports of the DIA&#8217;s initial assessment surfaced, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a new statement saying the nuclear sites have been &#8220;destroyed.&#8221; CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Iran&#8217;s nuclear program was &#8220;severely damaged.&#8221;&nbsp;<br \/>At a news conference Sunday, Caine said final assessments would take time.&nbsp;<br \/>&#8220;Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,&#8221; Caine said.&nbsp;<br \/>Eleanor Watson is a CBS News multi-platform reporter and producer covering the Pentagon.<br \/>       <small>&copy; 2025 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.<\/small>     <br \/>Copyright &copy;2025 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMihgFBVV95cUxPQWdTSHZlUXFQdXZicUlUbVE4ZU5RaUJYbmxaQnotNkxYZExtZTdtZmUwZmFzWkxMMkVVRVdLdnZHM3BsSjhHSjc3UFBsV0twbE9HSUtnNW5ldTJMTDROb3B4U2E0UVdQRkJ1RTZBQVpsV0RzUDFVMGdFaEZkNWxKZEV3OG1rZ9IBiwFBVV95cUxPS2V2TllINUVBYzNjM2NfZkhoQ2tKYmd6c3N4dXpNS0RFX3ZDaTFRc250ZTZLUkc3dDd1T0RuemxkN1VGOGE0cmZTUS1VVHFLSWplcmRPQi02VmR3OWp2bF80dDFSRHA3Snk5ZUdkSTM2OXlUWVgzbWF5LUtfaEZnNTZlN19hV1Zya3ZR?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watch CBS News Updated on: June 26, 2025 \/ 12:59 PM EDT \/ CBS News General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday released video of the tests of the type of &#8220;bunker-buster&#8221; bombs that were dropped on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend as he and Defense Secretary Pete [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":154808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}