President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth were hopping mad last week over attempts to minimize what they'd achieved through the deployment of B-2 stealth bombers and Massive Ordnance Penetrators against the nuclear weapons facilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation-state committed to jihad against America and its allies.
In case you missed this skirmish: Someone leaked to a CNN reporter a classified, preliminary, and "low-confidence" assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (one of 18 federal intelligence agencies) assessing that Tehran's nuclear weapons program had not been seriously set back.
That contradicted Mr. Trump's claim that the regime's key nuclear weapons sites had been "obliterated."
The leaked assessment was soon being echoed by other media outlets, setting up the narrative that there were "conflicting reports" – a weighty debate over whether Operation Midnight Hammer was a success.
That is what the leaker intended, presumably because he (or she) is anti-Trump, anti-Israel, an isolationist, a "restrainer," or some combination of the above.
As for the CNN reporter, Natasha Bertrand, she has a history of promoting false partisan narratives. Check out, for example, her coverage of Hunter Biden's laptop and the Steele Dossier.
Commentator Glenn Greenwald (a leftist and no Trump fan) has written: "There was arguably nobody in media other than Rachel Maddow who promoted and ratified that [Russiagate] hoax as aggressively, uncritically and persistently as Bertrand."
Over the last few days, additional information about the impact of the strike has been made public by credible sources. On Monday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said: "Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged. Key nuclear facilities have been completely destroyed ... [which] leads me to believe that Iran's nuclear program may be set back permanently."
Whatever the final "battle damage assessment," shouldn't we expect Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to attempt to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program, perhaps by establishing a secret enrichment plant where he would boost any uranium he may still possess to weapons grade? Yes, of course, because "Death to Israel!" and "Death to America!" are the clearly stated goals of his "revolutionary" theology.
However, as noted by Andrea Stricker, a technical expert and colleague at my think tank, the United States and Israel may learn of such work and, if they do, they are likely to "bomb the site and use that as a reason to carry out more strikes. Moreover, the weaponization route — construction of a nuclear device — is likely unavailable to Iran due to Israel's strikes on those facilities, equipment, documentation, and scientists."
As I often say: There are no permanent victories, only permanent battles.
Returning to the communications battle, there's an irony I don't want you to miss.
Just days before Ms. Bertrand was constructing the narrative that Tehran's nuclear weapons program had survived the bunker busters, CNN's Chief International Anchor, Christiane Amanpour, was asserting that Tehran didn't have a nuclear weapons program at all – but might want to build one in response to Israeli aggression.
The details: Two days before America's stealth bombers struck, in what was billed as an "exclusive interview" with Majid Takht‑Ravanchi, deputy foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ms. Amanpour referenced the Israeli campaign against military targets in Iran and asked: "Do you now think that, given this clear attack on your facilities and your conventional weapons, if you survive, will Iran decide to become a nuclear-weapons state?"
He replied: "We do not believe in nuclear weapons. ...Nuclear weapons have no place in our defensive doctrine."
Ms. Amanpour could have followed up by asking why, if that's the case, his government buried a uranium enrichment plant under a mountain at Fordow; why it's spent tens of billions of dollars on centrifuges to enrich uranium to near weapons-grade; why it's been developing ballistic missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads to American cities; what explanation he has for the Amad Plan (a project indisputably aimed at developing nukes); and why, after all this time and expense, nuclear power accounts for barely 2% of Iran's energy production?
She chose instead to say: "Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht‑Ravanchi, thank you very much indeed for joining us and we hope that we can talk to you again!"
Ms. Amanpour is hardly the only major media personality who prefers spinning to probing.
Piers Morgan, whose CNN show was canceled in 2014, is viciously anti-Israel and consistently platforms antisemites on his YouTube show.
The Associated Press acts as stenographer for the "Gaza Health Ministry" an arm of Hamas that routinely provides fabricated facts and figures.
The BBC, for which I had the utmost respect when I was a correspondent in Africa schlepping around a shortwave radio the size of a breadbox, has become reflexively and shamefully anti-Israel.
I want to be fair. There are journalists at CNN who are highly professional. I would hope they are embarrassed and, at least privately, are urging their bosses to rein in those colleagues who habitually misinform and disinform and, by doing so, further damage CNN's credibility and integrity.
I'm going to conclude on a personal note: It was 50 years ago this month that I began making my living as a reporter in the fervent belief that I had chosen a noble vocation; that my job was to ask tough questions and get at the truth.
That's at least part of the reason why it gets my goat that so many celebrity journalists have chosen to act as propagandists for tyrants and useful idiots for terrorists.