Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), who served in the Air Force in Iran and Afghanistan, criticized during a CNN interview President Trump’s politicization of U.S. airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Donald Trump wanted this nice movie where he could come in at the end, deliver a blow, tie it up with a bow, have a ceasefire, and it’s the end of a blockbuster movie. And unfortunately, he, by his own doing, said it was obliterated. He created these questions,” Kinzinger told CNN host Anderson Cooper. “And so now what you have is [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth and everybody around Donald Trump that are trying to create a straw man, and the straw man is ‘you’re going after the military.”
Debate has been brewing in the administration and Congress over whether Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacities were actually destroyed by U.S. bombings June 21.
A preliminary classified report that was leaked stated the bombings did not “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program like the president said but set back the program for only months, according to reporting from The New York Times.
“Now you have these people that should be very serious, the secretary of Defense, these people in the intelligence community, instead of giving us kind of clean-cut stuff, they’re actually being mouthpieces now for the president. And honestly, it’s politicizing the military, politicizing the intel community. And it’s just this usually doesn’t have a great ending,” Kinzinger continued.
Following the leaked report, the administration aimed to limit the amount of classified information shared with Congress as Democratic lawmakers demand answers on the actual impact of the strikes.
“Now the problem is since Donald Trump said obliterated, and we just don’t know that yet, he’s created the story,” Kinzinger said.
The House and Senate received an intelligence briefing this week. However, the briefing has not answered questions from dubious Democrats who still don’t know whether Iran was an imminent threat to the U.S. and whether the American strikes were successful.
“We’ve got the president saying one thing … and based on the DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] analysis, it’s different,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.), the senior Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. “His approach, potentially, could get us in trouble. If we don’t up our diplomacy game, then all bets are off.”
Hegseth has been adamantly defending the strikes. He lashed out at Fox journalist Jennifer Griffin for asking whether Iran’s enriched uranium stacks were inside Fordow, one of the nuclear sites the U.S. bombed.
Even though the administration has continuously asserted the strikes were successful, Trump said that he would consider bombing Iran again.
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