Oh, Good. Trump Pressured NATO into Increasing Military Spending.
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He came. He saw. He lied. He fled. Our NATO allies sat wondering when the next tiny shoe was going to drop. From CNBC:
“It’s been obliterated, totally obliterated,” Trump said.
A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment, however, found that America’s airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear sites did not completely destroy those facilities. Rather, the U.S. bombings likely set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, not years, according to the assessment, which was first reported by CNN and matched by other outlets including NBC News. Trump on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s report, which has not been made public but has been described to journalists by people familiar with it. But he suggested the data that informed it was insufficient. “They did a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it’s just a few days after, so they didn’t see” the sites, Trump said. “The report was not a complete report,” he said.
He added that the assessment said the damage from the U.S. attacks “may be very severe,” and complained that news outlets ignored that component in their reporting. The reporting undermines claims from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the Saturday night strikes on Iran’s Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan sites had totally “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.
Some of the press is giving him credit for promises by other NATO states to raise their military budgets. Of course, they all might have been doing that because, suddenly, the nature of their relationship with Iran had been adjusted by unilateral U.S. actions. That’s his participation ribbon.
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