Questions swirling around the success of U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites are raising fears on Capitol Hill that more could be coming.

President Trump is insisting Saturday’s strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities were an unqualified success, “obliterating” Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and setting back the program for years. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, amplified that assertion Wednesday, as did CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Yet U.S. intelligence officials at the Defense Department have arrived at a starkly different assessment, according to numerous news reports, saying the attacks failed to destroy either Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium or its nuclear infrastructure. The Pentagon analysts estimated the strikes set the program back by months, not years.

On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have not yet been briefed on the strikes, the conflicting messages from the administration have sparked a combination of confusion about the effectiveness of the attacks and new anxieties that Trump might pursue further intervention if the initial mission is found to have fallen short of objectives.

“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran's nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked. “There apparently are reasons to believe that that was a blatant misrepresentation made by Donald Trump to the American people.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said the sharp contrast between Trump’s claims and the reports detailing the preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence........

© The Hill