Live updates: Trump maintains US strikes caused ‘total obliteration’ of Iran’s nuclear facilities

US President Donald Trump maintained Wednesday that the strikes he ordered on Iranian nuclear facilities caused “total obliteration,” even after an initial classified report found the attack only set back Tehran’s nuclear program by a few months.

Lashing out at the media, including CNN, which reported on the findings, Trump argued the strikes put Iran’s nuclear ambitions back decades.

Still, Trump acknowledged the intelligence was “inconclusive” and preliminary, and suggested Israel would provide a fuller picture shortly with its own findings.

Trump called on two of his subordinates — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — to buffer his assertions about the damage assessments.

Each insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been badly damaged, and each suggested nefarious intentions behind the leak of the report.

“It was a top secret report, it was preliminary, it was low confidence,” Hegseth said of the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, saying there was political motives behind leaking it and that an FBI investigation was underway to identify the leaker.

Rubio said Iran was now “way behind where they were just seven days ago.”

“Now, anything in the world can be rebuilt, but now we know where it is, and if they try to rebuild it, we’ll have options there as well,” he said.