3 sides of Trump's Iran bombing story play out in public

Crash Course subscribers can join in the conversation! Click the speech bubble icon to leave a comment or click the heart to like this post.

The news, in brief…

• A timeline of the Israel-Iran ceasefire

  Just because the two countries have stopped making war on each other, doesn’t mean everybody’s happy. Trump said that the two sides didn’t know “what the f**k they’re doing” while speaking to reporters on Tuesday. Read more.

• ICE is detaining a record number of migrants

  New reports claim that the agency is detaining nearly 60,000 people in the United States, half of whom have no criminal record. Read more.

• DOJ whistleblower says Bove encouraged defiance of court orders

  Former high-level DOJ official Erez Reuveni said Emil Bove III pushed department officials to carry out Trump’s deportations to El Salvador “no matter what.” Read more.

• House Democrats join GOP in voting down impeachment articles

  Texas Rep. Al Green drafted articles of impeachment over Trump’s attack on Iran. House Democrats helped table the resolution before it could get going, with party leaders calling the move “a distraction.” Read more.

• NATO head lays it on thick

  As President Donald Trump headed to the Netherlands to attend a NATO summit, he shared a gushing message from the head of the treaty organization. “Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe,” Secretary-General Mark Rutte wrote. Read more.

Make me smarter …

Sleeper Supreme Court decision could have profound impacts on Trump’s agenda

A case brought by the NRA could blow back on the Trump administration's efforts to target opponents. Read more.

Liar, liar, post-ceasefire

The Pentagon’s own intelligence arm is admitting that Donald Trump’s surprise attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities were likely not all that effective.

At least, that’s the story if you believe a report from CNN. The outlet cited an internal report from the Defense Intelligence Agency and two insiders who spoke anonymously. Those two sources said that Iran’s uranium stores were not destroyed by the bombings and that the country’s centrifuges remained in one piece.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” the source told CNN.

At the same time, Iran boasted that there would be no interruption to their nuclear research program.

“We are ready to restart enrichment; our program will not stop,” Iranian authorities reportedly shared on Tuesday.

At the same time, key members of the Trump administration slagged their own intelligence sources, saying that the analysis revealed by CNN was shoddy and that the network’s source was a “low-level loser.”

“This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNN. “The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump.”

Pentagon head Pete Hegseth agreed.

“Based on everything we have seen, and I’ve seen it all, our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly,” he said in a statement.

What we’re left with, without evidence of the facilities up and running, is a game between three sides that all have something to gain by sharing their version of the truth.

Regardless of the veracity of their claims, it’s fair to assume the Defense leakers are trying to embarrass Trump and Hegseth after they spent the weekend crowing about the complete obliteration of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Iran has every reason to hint that they were unfazed by the bombs, especially so soon after attacks from the U.S. and Israel.

And Hegseth and Leavitt’s jobs depend on defending the Trump version of events to the hilt. Weighing for the fact that Trump is nearly always lying, it’s likely that the truth lies somewhere between the CNN report and Iranian officials’ version of events.

Don’t expect a walking back from the Trump admin if they’re caught spreading a story they knew to be untrue, however. By now, we know the old saying in Tennessee that’s definitely from Texas and probably from Tennessee. They’ll have moved on to the next half-truth or whole lie and it will be our fault for listening to them in the first place.

What do you think? Have all these grains of salt thrown off your sodium intake? Will we ever know the extent to which Iranian nuclear facilities were damaged? Moreover, is this all a distraction from the illegality of the attacks in the first place? Sound off in the comments.

Support our bold journalism: Become a Salon member today.

Before you go …

Be prepared for “further escalation” from Trump

Four experts on how Trump is using crises to expand his power. Read more.