Two things can be true at the same time.

It’s possible that the American airstrikes did “obliterate” the Iranian nuclear sites hit on Saturday night.

It’s also possible that Iran retains stockpiles of enriched uranium and nuclear production equipment elsewhere – undisclosed.

We know from the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has been obstructive, and we know too that the regime has attempted to build new facilities.

This pattern of behaviour makes it possible, even probable, that they have existing hidden programmes.

Preliminary intelligence reports shared with European governments indicated that Iran’s highly-enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact and that much of it was not concentrated in the Fordow site.

Given all this, the storm around the level of destruction caused by Saturday’s American airstrikes could be a distraction. Nevertheless, the early morning Pentagon news conference revealed plenty.

There were two strands to the briefing. From the politician, we got a political attack, and from the general, we got the military detail.

The attack on the media

Defence secretary Pete Hegseth went full throttle on his assault against the ‘fake news’.

He didn’t just shoot the messenger; he sprayed his blunt criticism all over the defence department press room with characteristic disdain. The Fox News anchor-turned-politician has left his past well behind him.

“In hunting for scandals all the time, in trying to find wedges and spin stories, this press corps and the press corps miss historic moments,” he said.

“You, and I mean specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard.

“It’s like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful, so bad. You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes.”

This was a news conference to counter the leaks to numerous US news outlets, which suggested that the weekend strikes on the Iranian nuclear site might not have been very successful.

The leaks, which Team Trump believes may have come from Congress, where certain lawmakers were shown the initial intelligence assessments, were from a preliminary report which was marked as containing ‘low confidence’ information.

Mr Hegseth said: “How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities.

“I think it’s too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news, so we’re used to that, but we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what’s really happened…

“And the reality is, 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.”

The spy and the specially-designed bomb

The second strand of the news conference, from America’s top general Dan Caine, provided us with new details about the air strikes last Saturday night.

General Caine would not be drawn on the definitive success of the bombings. “We do not mark our own homework,” he said.

Instead, he sought to illustrate how the mission the military was tasked with, and the performance of the weapons used, all played out perfectly.

He revealed the Fordow nuclear site had been under surveillance for 15 years. One intelligence officer, he said, had the job of monitoring the site.

“For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target,” General Caine said.

“He studied the geology. He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology, the construction materials, where the materials came from.

“He looked at the vent shaft, the exhaust shaft, the electrical systems, the environmental control systems, every nook, every crater, every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out, they literally dreamed about this target at night, when they slept.”

He also revealed the bunker-busting bombs were developed precisely for this mission.

He showed newly-declassified videos of the Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP) bombs exploding in test scenarios.

Together, the information was designed to show the high probability of massive damage to the nuclear sites.

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A congressional leak?

In a related development, a Trump administration official has confirmed that the White House plans to limit intelligence sharing with lawmakers following the leak of the initial damage assessment.

According to NBC News, the administration plans to post less information on CAPNET, which is the name of a system utilised to share classified material with Congress.

It is not clear whether the assessment was leaked by someone in Congress or by a defence department official, but the speaker of the house – Trump ally Mike Johnson – said he suspects it came from Congress.

“There was a leak, and we’re trying to get down to the bottom of that. It’s dangerous and ridiculous that happened. We’re going to solve that problem, and we’ll keep the coordination,” Mr Johnson told NBC News.

Democratic Party Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticised the development.

“They seem not to want to see the facts get out. Just Trump’s version of the facts, which we know is often false,” Schumer said.

Pete Hegseth’s angry news conference, where the US defence secretary roundly abused those media outlets and individuals who didn’t agree with him, certainly told us one thing.

That when reliable information eventually emerges from the battle damage assessment of the US attack on Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant, it won’t be accepted by everyone.

The whole issue has suddenly become politically toxic in Washington DC and will doubtless be fed into the spin dryer of vitriolic commentary and assertion that has been the most stand-out feature of this second Trump administration.

But what we did find out from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, was that the GBU-57 bunker buster bombs had been designed in some secrecy with exactly this sort of target in mind.

Trump-Iran live: US president reacts to Hegseth news conference

We also learned they all worked as per the test simulations, and that 12 were fired at six separate targets at Fordow and another two at a single target at the Natanz nuclear facility.

But the fierce argument over how to characterise the damage done in these attacks is really just a semantic spat. The two key questions are rather different.

Firstly, will the Iranians decide to give up their quest for a nuclear weapon as a result of this attack, as the Syrians did in 2007 when the Israelis destroyed their Al Kibar nuclear reactor?

Or else will they go hell for leather for a nuclear weapon, as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did after the Israelis destroyed his nuclear reactor in 1981?

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And secondly, if the Iranians decide to go again for a nuclear weapon, how long will it be before they are back at the nuclear threshold, where they were less than a month ago?

Will it be within a year? Or five years? Or longer?

When we have an answer to those two questions, then we can put some real perspective on whether the US bombing has really been a success.

The B-2 bombers have returned to their US base, but questions about the success of their airstrikes last weekend hang in the air.

President Donald Trump is pushing back hard against a leaked preliminary intelligence report, suggesting the audacious bombing raid only set Iran’s nuclear ambition back “by months”.

“It’s destroyed… Iran will not have nuclear. We blew it up. It’s blown to kingdom come,” Mr Trump told a news conference.

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A statement from CIA director John Ratcliffe backed that up. He said: “[The] CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s nuclear programme has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.

“This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

But Democrats say the president was claiming Iran‘s underground facilities had been “obliterated” long before any intelligence had been received.

Arizona senator Mark Kelly, who flew 39 combat missions in the first Gulf War, said: “He’s just saying that because he wants that to be the narrative.

“He said it the night of the strike, without any information, not even satellite imagery, and certainly without any information about what happened underneath 200 feet of rock and granite and dirt.”

“The likelihood of something underground like that being obliterated is incredibly low,” he added.

Senator Kelly blamed Mr Trump for Iran’s enrichment growing from “less than 4% to, public reporting, 60%”, accusing him of “chucking the Obama deal out the window”.

The leaking of the classified report from the Pentagon and subsequent debate has enraged US defence secretary Pete Hegseth.

Read more:
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“If you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow [nuclear site], you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear programme is obliterated,” Mr Hegseth said.

“Those that dropped the bombs precisely in the right place know exactly what happened when they exploded, and you know who else knows? Iran.”

The White House is railing against what it calls the “fake news media” for reporting the content of the leaked report.

But the success of a military operation has become a battle of political narratives in Congress.

That will last longer than a 12-day war because the truth lies buried, quite literally, deep underground.