The Spys Say, "Meh"

The initial report on the bunker buster attack on Iran has been leaked, and the reports appear to be rather underwhelming:

A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The strikes sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, the officials said the early findings concluded.

Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program had been delayed, but by less than six months.

The report also said that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations.

Needless to say, this has not made Donald Trump a happy camper:

As President Trump landed in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the annual meeting of NATO allies, he was desperate to hold together the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran, cursing and cajoling to make sure that history would remember him for bombing Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend and brokering a peace deal days later.

But just hours after he landed, the leak of a new U.S. intelligence report cast doubt on his repeated claim that the American strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programs. Mr. Trump started using the word “obliterated” before he received his first battle damage report, and since then, he has closely monitored which members of his administration have used the same language.

The report’s finding, while preliminary, was particularly damaging because it emerged from inside the Pentagon, which had carried out the strikes, and it concluded that the military action had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a number of months.

Mr. Trump had been eager to celebrate his success at NATO and revel in the fact that he had conducted an attack that none of his predecessors had dared to launch. His view was backed up by Mark Rutte, the secretary general of the alliance, who wrote Mr. Trump a private message thanking him for his “decisive action” in Iran.

Needless to say, Mr. Rutte is a complete simp, and Trump had major butt-hurt

………

The upbeat demeanor crumbled once the intelligence reports started to leak out, with Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, blasting the findings as “flat-out wrong” and a “clear attempt to demean President Trump.”

Later that night, Mr. Trump appeared to dig in, posting on social media a series of quotes from administration officials, as well as the front page of one newspaper, using the word “obliterated” to describe the damage.

“Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CNN on Sunday, in one passage Mr. Trump posted. “Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target and worked perfectly.”

You know this sort of failure is not uncommon at your age, Donald.  You may want to talk to your physician about a prescription for Fukitol™.

Side effects may include losses in the mid-term election losses, impeachment, and having your vice-president invoking the the 25th amendment to remove you from power. 

If you experience any of these side effects, discontinue the medication, transfer your assets to a Swiss bank, and flee the country.