Andreas Kluth: Did the US obliterate Iran's nuclear program? We just don't know

Let’s see: Did the United States ever let good storytelling interfere with rigorous intelligence gathering in making the case for war in the Middle East? Well, there was the prologue to that war in 2003, when the White House told the country, the world and itself that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist. Surely, the U.S. wouldn’t let powerful narratives trump truth-seeking ever again. Or would it?

Sadly, the White House might be in the process of repeating that mistake. The controversy is about operation Midnight Hammer, in which American bombers and other aircraft struck Iran’s nuclear facilities. The debate is not — and should not be — about whether the mission was militarily impressive and the pilots, including a woman, were heroic (yes and yes). It should focus on only one thing: Did it achieve its strategic objective?

That objective, at least as stated, was to end Iran’s ability to make nukes, or to delay its efforts indefinitely. In that light, did Midnight Hammer succeed? A definitive answer is impossible to give and may remain elusive for a long time. Evidently, though, that ambiguity is something that not only President Donald Trump and his national-security team but also the American and international public cannot bear.

Trump’s story since the strike has been that Midnight Hammer “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. To that narrative he has now added his view that media outlets which have reported on conflicting intelligence assessments are “scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick.” He’s also thrown in the red herring that these peddlers of “fake news” are insulting not only him but also the brave pilots who flew the mission. In fact, nobody anywhere, as far as I’m aware, has shown anything other than veneration for the execution of the mission, and no pilots are on record for feeling offended. This storyline is one of several attempted head fakes.

Trump’s most sycophantic cabinet members, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have understood their assigned roles in this media spectacle and are shouting into the president’s bullhorn. “You want to call it destroyed? You want to call it defeated? You want to call it obliterated? Choose your word,” Hegseth defied the assembled press on Thursday.

He too then tried to paint any doubts about the fate of Iran’s nuclear program as bad faith by the press. “How about we celebrate” the mission, he gasped in mock exasperation. “How about we talk about how special America is? That only we have these capabilities?” In fact most of the early commentary, including mine, started with exactly that.

The other team members have their own reasons for hewing to that line. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has been under particular pressure. In March, she testified to Congress that the spy agencies believed that Iran was not currently building a nuclear weapon. “She’s wrong,” Trump recently bristled when confronted with that assessment, while suspecting more generally that Gabbard is off message. (To brief the Senate on Thursday, the president sent his national security adviser and the director of the CIA, but not Gabbard.)

To compensate, Gabbard is now extra-emphatic in agreeing with Trump’s narrative: “New intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times,” she posted on X; “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.” Anyone doubting that, she adds, is trying “to undermine President Trump’s decisive leadership and the brave servicemen and women” who executed the mission.

The most restrained and professional member of the team remains Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In his first comments after Midnight Hammer, he observed that a full assessment would take time. In his second update, standing next to Hegseth, he added no new intelligence information. Instead, he too went into storytelling mode (stirringly, at times), with details about the attacks and the service members.

But what about the facts?, you may wonder at this point. On those the jury is out, which is the reason for all the fuss. A leaked preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, a part of the Pentagon, suggested that Midnight Hammer may have delayed Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, but certainly not years. It also said that Iran had moved much of its enriched uranium out of the sites that were hit, to various other locations. Several European intelligence services have drawn the same conclusion.

If true, these reports directly contravene Trump’s narrative of a strategic (as opposed to tactical) success. He and his team therefore cherry-pick from other intelligence agencies, and notably Israel’s, which seems to have concluded that the American strikes “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”

Anybody who remembers the dueling narratives and lack of hard evidence in the run-up to the Iraq war should now be breaking into a cold sweat. I for one recall staying up late in the Asian time zone I was in, with knots in my stomach, to hear Colin Powell’s testimony to the United Nations Security Council in 2003.

At that time, the president should have considered the possibility that the adversary, despite appearances, might not have weapons of mass destruction. This time, the president should contemplate the possibility that Iran, despite stunning video footage from Fordow, might still have the capability to make nukes.

But that would take intellectual humility. And that is currently not a priority for either the White House or many of its detractors in Congress, the media and elsewhere. What a shame.

Anybody who tries to learn from history should resolve not to surrender in the face of confusing and ambiguous evidence, and to resist embracing any storyline until it’s proven, even if it sounds good on TV or among friends. For now, the only honest conclusion to draw about the American strike and its effect on Iran’s nuclear program is this: We just don’t know — and probably won’t for quite some time.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.