Hegseth praises U.S. attack on Iran but offers few details on the strikes’ impact

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine held a Thursday (June 26, 2025) morning news conference to respond to an early leaked intelligence report suggesting U.S. strikes against Iran likely put the country back mere months.

President Donald Trump has insisted the U.S. strikes delivered a “devastating” attack and that questioning his assessment of the strike was not only unpatriotic but also makes the pilots who dropped the bombs “very upset.”

Drawing reliable conclusions about the impact of the U.S. strikes is difficult only days after they took place.

Trump’s fights with the intelligence community

President Trump’s fights with the intelligence community were a running theme of his first term as he raged against an investigation into his campaign’s alleged links to Russia. Now, a sequel is playing out as Trump battles to shape the public’s understanding of his foreign policy gamble in Iran.

An early U.S. intelligence assessment said Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after American strikes on three sites last weekend. The Republican president has rejected the report and pronounced the program “completely and fully obliterated.”

The dispute is unlikely to fade anytime soon. Top administration officials are pressing Trump’s case, with Mr. Hegseth scolding the media at a Pentagon briefing Thursday for “breathlessly” focusing on an intelligence report he downplayed as preliminary. Briefings also are scheduled for lawmakers, though the White House plans to limit the sharing of classified information after the initial assessment leaked this week.