Senators left a classified briefing about the impact of U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities split along party lines, with Republicans saying it reinforced their belief that the strikes were effective and some Democrats complaining that it did not fully answer their questions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed senators after days of complaints from Democrats that the administration had not filled them in on how badly strikes last weekend damaged Iran’s nuclear program.
Several Republican senators emerged from the Thursday briefing saying it backed up Ratcliffe’s public assessment Wednesday that the program had been severely damaged. But Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said the briefing raised more questions than it answered and that he would push for more details.
“What was clear from today’s briefing is that there is no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan,” Schumer said on the Senate floor after the briefing. “What are we doing?”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after the briefing that it appeared to him that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a handful of months. His conclusion echoed a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that leaked this week, undercutting President Donald Trump’s claims that the strikes had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.
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