The D Brief: WH, DOD upset by Iran assessment; Comity at NATO summit; Military mission expands in US; AI’s latest natsec problem; And a bit more.
Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston | June 26, 2025 11:18 AM ET
The D Brief Iran Israel Missiles White House Intelligence Army Border Security National Guard Deportations Artificial Intelligence
The White House is upset about skepticism over the effectiveness of its Iran strikes carried out by B-2 stealth bombers over the weekend. The aircraft dropped 14 special-purpose munitions intended to penetrate the mountain complex at Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant and destroy Iran’s ability to enrich enough uranium to create a nuclear weapon. But a leaked early intelligence assessment indicated the U.S. strikes did not fully eradicate Tehran’s nuclear program and only set Iran’s nuclear weapons program back by a few months.
About Iran’s nuclear program: “It's gone for years, years,” President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday during his visit to the annual NATO summit, hosted this year at The Hague. He then verbally attacked three media outlets, calling each “scum,” and said, “They're bad people. They're sick. And what they've done is they've tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”
Trump also called for the firing of CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand in a complaint-filled diatribe on social media Wednesday, and ordered his Pentagon chief to hold a “Major News Conference” to “fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.” (More on that below.)
Notable: An estimated 20,000 uranium centrifuges are believed to have been damaged at two locations inside Iran, Natanz and Fordow, David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security wrote online Wednesday after reports of the initial U.S. intelligence assessment emerged.
https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2025/06/the-d-brief-june-26-2025/406340/?oref=d1-homepage-river
