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Defense &
National Security

Defense &
National Security

The Big Story

House Democrats not convinced Iran nuclear capabilities wiped

A House briefing from Trump administration officials on last weekend’s strikes against Iranian nuclear sites has done little to mollify the concerns of Democrats, who say they were presented little evidence that the attacks will prevent Tehran from producing nuclear weapons.

© Greg Nash

Skeptical Democrats had gone into the briefing with two pressing questions: Did Iran pose an imminent threat to Americans, thereby justifying President Trump’s move to launch the strikes without congressional approval? And did the attacks “obliterate” Iran’s capacity to make nuclear weapons, as Trump has claimed?

Leaving the closed-door gathering, Democrats said they got satisfactory answers to neither question.

“I would say that that particular briefing left me with more concerns and a true lack of clarity on how we are defining the mission and the success of it,” said Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the Democratic whip.

Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), a former nuclear physicist, said the U.S. strikes likely knocked out Iran’s centrifuges and other infrastructure required to enrich uranium in the future. But there’s no evidence, he said, that the attacks destroyed Iran’s existing stockpiles of enriched uranium. If those are intact, he warned, Iran could still produce weapons with the strength of a Hiroshima bomb in “a very small breakout time.”

“The goal of this mission, from the start, was to secure or destroy that material,” he said. “That’s where they’re hiding the ball. And that’s what we have to keep our eyes on.”

Friday’s House briefing came six days after Trump ordered strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to dismantle Tehran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. The briefing was conducted by top administration officials — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who had also briefed Senate lawmakers a day earlier.

Trump has repeatedly said the mission was an unqualified success, “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear capacity and setting the program back by years. And the president’s GOP allies in the Capitol echoed that message after the briefing.

“It is clear, everyone can see by the videos, that these massive ordinance penetrating bombs did the job,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said. “I think their key facilities have been disabled, and I think Iran is now a long time away from doing what they might have done before this very successful operation.”

A preliminary........

© The Hill