The White House is scrambling to address growing questions about its military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, as President Trump and top officials insist the decision to bomb facilities has significantly set back Tehran’s nuclear efforts.

The Trump administration today will dispatch CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other officials to Capitol Hill to brief senators while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to hold a Pentagon news conference this morning "in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots," Trump said.

The president took a shot at media coverage of the Iran strikes while touting Hegseth's appearance on Truth Social, promising it "will prove both interesting and irrefutable."

▪ The Hill: Trump fights to hold on to narrative of Iran win

▪ The Hill: Questions around success of Iran strikes spark fears on Capitol Hill

Ahead of his Hill visit, Ratcliffe reinforced Trump’s statements that U.S. bunker-buster bombs dropped on multiple Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities effectively ended Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

“New intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method" found that "several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.

The CIA chief, a former member of Congress, is updating lawmakers after the administration postponed planned briefings Tuesday.

Trump said during a news conference in the Netherlands at the NATO Summit on Wednesday that Iran did not remove its near-weapons-grade uranium before the U.S. bombings. He said uranium is now buried beneath “granite, concrete and steel” under Iran’s blackened facilities.

“We think we hit them so hard and so fast, they didn’t get to move [it],” the president added. “We think we got it.”

Vice President Vance and Hegseth have also described the uranium as buried.

▪ The Hill: Trump, Hegseth scoff at Iran damage assessment; leak probe underway.

▪ The New York Times: Secretary of State Marco Rubio fleshes out Trump’s case that Iran’s nuclear capacity was eliminated.

As it escalates its public defense of the strikes, the administration says it will also impose new limits on intelligence sharing with Congress after the president lambasted media outlets that reported preliminary findings from a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) damage assessment.

Trump said information reported by news outlets was inconclusive and overtaken by additional intelligence, including from Israel.

Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), urged the administration to reconsider any information blackouts.

“The law requires the congressional intelligence committees to be kept fully and currently informed, and I expect the Intelligence Community to comply with the law,” Himes said.

Trump pointed to a statement from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that the strikes “rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.” The statement was distributed by the White House and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other parts of Iran’s military nuclear program, have set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years,” the statement said.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera, “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, recently rebuffed by Trump, said Wednesday that "new intelligence" confirmed the Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed.

The president said he doubts Iran would seek to rebuild its nuclear program, but if it tried, he suggested the regime would need years.

Trump also expressed confidence the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Iran can hold. “I think the war ended, actually, when we hit the various nuclear sites with planes,” he told reporters.

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, said they disapproved of the U.S. strikes in Iran, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey this week. The administration’s messaging has emphasized U.S. military prowess and assertions that Trump attained his goal to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon.

SMART TAKE with BLAKE BURMAN

The Trump administration is continuing to defend the success of Operation Midnight Hammer, which includes the CIA Director John Ratcliffe releasing a statement saying Iran’s nuclear program was set back years. I asked retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard Newton, NewsNation’s senior national security contributor, what he takes away from the satellite images of the Fordow nuclear facility.

"It’s severely damaged. We have to wait a number of days and maybe even weeks before we really........

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