Questions around success of Iran strikes spark fears on Capitol Hill

Questions swirling around the success of U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites are raising fears on Capitol Hill that more could be coming.

President Trump is insisting Saturday’s strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities were an unqualified success, “obliterating” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and setting back the program for years. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, amplified that assertion Wednesday, as did CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Yet U.S. intelligence officials at the Defense Department have arrived at a starkly different assessment, according to numerous news reports, saying the attacks failed to destroy either Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium or its nuclear infrastructure. The Pentagon analysts estimated the strikes set the program back by months, not years. 

On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have not yet been briefed on the strikes, the conflicting messages from the administration have sparked a combination of confusion about the effectiveness of the attacks and new anxieties that Trump might pursue further intervention if the initial mission is found to have fallen short of objectives. 

“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran's nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked. “There apparently are reasons to believe that that was a blatant misrepresentation made by Donald Trump to the American people.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said the sharp contrast between Trump’s claims and the reports detailing the preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), a branch of the Pentagon, has heightened lawmaker concerns that Trump could order additional strikes to eliminate any perceptions that the mission was a failure.

“We've got the president saying one thing … and based on the DIA analysis, it's different,” Thompson said. “His approach, potentially, could get us in trouble. If we don't up our diplomacy game, then all bets are off. 

“The worst thing we need is a broader conflict.”

Fueling the apprehension and uncertainty, Trump has kept Congress in the dark surrounding Saturday’s strikes. On Tuesday, administration officials were scheduled to brief House and Senate lawmakers on the operation, but they canceled the meetings hours beforehand. The meetings have been rescheduled for later in the week — Thursday for the Senate and Friday for the House — but some lawmakers are questioning whether they will ever happen. 

“As a member of Congress, as the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I have to respectfully say: I have no clue,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said. “This administration does not communicate." 

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said it’s impossible to know how the famously impulsive president will ultimately react to revelations that the Pentagon’s assessment conflicts with his rosier narrative. In one scenario, the response could involve more strikes on Iran; in another, Trump might just claim victory and move on.

“He could use this news to do whatever he wants,” Frost said. “He could go after [Iran] again, but that's conceding that the first strike didn't really work out the way he said it was — he said he completely obliterated Iran. The other option for him is saying, ‘[DIA analysts] are wrong and we did it,’ and then move on.”

"No one knows what's going on,” he added, “not even people in his own administration.”

Complicating any decisions for Trump, the initial strikes — as well as his hints at regime change — severed the MAGA movement that constitutes his base of support.

Some of those loyalists supported the strikes, encouraged by Trump’s promises to make them a one-and-done incursion that wouldn’t bog the United States in another marathon Middle Eastern conflict. Others were furious that Trump would launch new military operations in the region, deeming it a betrayal of the “America First” agenda that swept him into the White House in 2016 and again in 2024.  

“It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts, and neocon tv personalities that MAGA hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS!" Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s staunchest congressional allies, posted on the social platform X earlier this week.

Some of those same Republicans, including Greene, on Tuesday cheered Trump’s push for a ceasefire between Iran and Israel — the latest indication of the fealty the president has won from his party but also a sign they could be unhappy with any further escalation.

Saturday’s strikes, which came amid a two-week conflict between Israel and Iran, targeted three Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to dismantle Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. And Trump wasted no time claiming victory, saying the mission had “completely and totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. 

But the DIA’s preliminary assessment, first reported by CNN on Tuesday, found that intelligence officials in Trump’s own Pentagon were more skeptical. They found that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was still intact and suggested some of the existing enriched uranium had been moved to other locations before the strikes, according to the reports. 

The president and top administration officials have railed against both the DIA assessment and the news publications that reported on it. 

"Real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be," Trump said Wednesday during a NATO summit in The Hague. 

Gabbard, the national intelligence chief whose assessments about Iran’s nuclear capabilities have clashed recently with Trump’s, backed the president Wednesday, saying all three targeted sites had been “destroyed” and “would likely take years” to rebuild. She accused “the propaganda media” of cherry-picking pieces of the DIA report to cast Trump in a bad light. 

Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill are also rushing to his defense, saying they believe the president over the bureaucrats in the Pentagon and the news media. 

"They're calling that fake news,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas). “I think the reporting is wrong."

Most Democrats, meanwhile, say they don’t trust Trump at all. 

“He’s lying again,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). “I don't trust him, I don't believe him and we need to try and get the truth out of what has happened.”

The controversy over the effectiveness of Saturday’s strikes is fueling the push from a growing number of lawmakers for a war powers resolution designed to block further military action in Iran without the explicit approval of Congress. 

“What he did the other day was an act of war. And that act of war — which he called a one-off military excursion, did not produce, clearly, the impact that he's claiming,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). “We just simply cannot depend on Donald Trump as a sober, serious-minded president to involve this nation in military conflict without congressional approval.”