WASHINGTON (TNND) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired a general whose initial intelligence assessment about the damage to Iranian nuclear sites angered Trump, according to sources from The Associated Press.
The AP confirmed this information with two people who are familiar with the matter and a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The firing was first reported by The Washington Post.
Lt. Gen Jeffrey Krause was ousted as the head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
This comes after the Trump administration vowed Iran’s nuclear stockpile was destroyed, rejecting reports of otherwise.
Hegseth criticized those who reported the nuclear stockpile was still intact. Several media outlets originally reported that new U.S. intelligence said the Fordow nuclear site was mostly destroyed. According to the reports, the damage done to the other two sites, Natanz and Isfahan, was less severe, which contradicts President Donald Trump’s and Hegseth’s assessments.
“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was a historically successful attack,” Hegseth said at the time.
A month after the U.S. assaults Iranian nuclear facilities, dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi disclosed in a new interview that the facilities were “seriously damaged.”
“(Iran’s nuclear program) is now stopped because yes, damages are serious and severe, but obviously we cannot give up our enrichment because it is an achievement of our own scientists and now more than that, it is a question of national pride,” Araghchi said in an interview with Fox News.
Editor’s note:The Associated Press contributed to this report.