Senators remained divided about the success of the American military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program following a classified briefing on the subject from Cabinet officials on Thursday. Several Republicans hailed the strike as a success, while some Democrats said it had barely set Iran’s nuclear program back and many others on both sides said that it’s too soon to accurately judge the attack’s success. 

The briefing led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe also does not appear to have dissuaded Democrats from pursuing plans to call up a war powers resolution to block further military action against Iran. 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that “we’ve caused catastrophic damage to Iran’s nuclear program.” He said Iran might try to rebuild the program at some point, but that the U.S. and Israel had struck critical targets in all parts of the nuclear weapons manufacturing process.

“You have seen several experts in the last couple of days, who I think it’s fair to say are not Donald Trump partisans, use words like ‘effectively destroyed,’ ‘catastrophic damage,’ ‘set back for years,’” Cotton said. “I think it’s safe to say that we have struck a major blow, alongside our friends in Israel, against Iran’s nuclear program that is going to … protect the world from the risk of an Iranian nuclear program for years.”

Cotton declined to comment on whether Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium was destroyed or had been relocated, adding “it was not part of the mission to destroy all their enriched uranium, or seize it, or anything else.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that the program had been set back “years, not months,” adding, “I think it’s absurd that any member of the Senate would say … that this wasn’t necessary.”

“Nobody is going to work in these three sites any time soon. They’re not going to get into them any time soon. Their operational capability was obliterated,” Graham said. He also said he doesn’t know where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is, but likewise argued that it was “not part of the target set.”

The South Carolina senator additionally said, “I don’t want people to think that the problem is over, because it’s not. They’re going to keep trying this until they change their stated goal” of eliminating Israel.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said he was “very confident it’s been set way back, a year at the minimum.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said that the strikes had “accomplished the purpose of destroying the nuclear ambitions,” adding that assessments would be ongoing “but [are] very positive.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) declined to say whether he was confident that Iran’s nuclear program had been destroyed or disabled, but told Jewish Insider that the briefing had “set the record straight” from a leaked low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency report indicating the strikes had limited effect and only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months. He said that report was not accurate based on the information he received.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told JI the briefing had “affirmed” his support for the strikes.

“You can’t possibly know with certainty” if the program was destroyed, Fetterman said. “We have to get beyond the partisanship. … We will know more and more as there’s more time. But at this point, it was the right thing. … What’s out so far confirms that significant damage was done.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he did not learn anything new in the briefing that would impact his support for Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

“I didn’t hear anything in there that I haven’t read in the press. I think the operation was obviously a great success, and the president’s achievement in getting a ceasefire in place, I think, is really significant. And now it’s a question of making that stick and pursuing our objectives going forward,” Hawley told JI while leaving the briefing.

Others were more pessimistic about the strike.

“Right now, it seems to me that leaked DIA report is right, that we only set this program back a handful of months, and that is not obliteration,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the most vocal critics of the strike, said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), reading off of a card of prewritten, typed remarks, said that he “did not receive an adequate answer” to the question of whether Iran’s nuclear stockpile had been destroyed.

“What was clear is that there was no coherent strategy, no end game, no plan, no specific, no detailed plan on how Iran does not attain a nuclear weapon,” Schumer said. “Anyone in that meeting, anyone — if they’re being honest with themselves, their constituents, their colleagues — would know that we need to enforce the War Powers Act and force them to articulate an answer to some specific questions and a coherent strategy.”

Many senators said that the full impact of the strikes will take longer to understand, as more intelligence is gathered.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said that the briefing confirmed that the mission had gone off as administration officials had planned: “The guys hit the targets as planned. The munitions worked exactly as planned, and the results were as expected.”

Rounds added that it is impossible to say exactly how long the nuclear program was delayed “until we actually get the real analysis of proof of what happened.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that “the reporting will continue to come out around” whether the program was set back by months or years, but added, “as Gen. [Dan] Caine and [former national security official] Brett McGurk, if you heard his analysis, followed up and confirmed that the first two phases of the operation seemed very successful.”

Asked if Trump had been honest in describing the program as eliminated, Shaheen said, “you’d have to ask the president.”

Shaheen said that the briefing was a “good follow-up” to a news conference by Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier in the day, where Caine discussed the strike on Fordow and the bunker busting bomb used.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, said it’s “going to take some time to get a final assessment of how much damage [was done],” adding that he’s concerned that President Donald Trump “jump[ed] to a conclusion too early” that the program was “obliterated.”

“I hope that is the final assessment. But if not, does that end up providing a false sense of comfort to the American people?” Warner said. He added that some of Iran’s enriched uranium “was never going to be taken out by a bunker-buster bomb, so some of that obviously remains in Iran.”

Warner said there are still questions about how quickly Iran could rush to a nuclear device using the material it still retains, particularly if it did not plan to mount the bomb on a missile.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) also said that the briefers had told the senators it was “too early to know” whether the program was destroyed.

Asked by JI if he learned anything during the briefing that changed his assessment of Trump’s strike being the wrong decision, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) replied: “I came away feeling like I learned some valuable information, yes.”

“The whole time I’ve been a senator, I’ve been gravely concerned about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and the threat it poses to Israel, Tehran, to the region. Your question is: do I feel safer [after the briefing]? We do not have a complete assessment yet of the impact of the strikes of last week, and when we do, I think that’ll answer a lot of currently unanswered questions,” Coons told reporters.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said that “the situation is evolving and what we know about it — the nature of the thing is what we’ll know about it is evolving,” adding that he plans to vote for the war powers resolution.

Multiple senators said that the administration appears to be focused on resuming diplomacy as its next step.

“The administration’s trying [to] engage, on a diplomatic level, and that would be the next step, is trying to have some kind of discussion with the Iranians about giving up their ability to enrich uranium,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) said.

Graham expressed deep skepticism about the possibility of negotiations with Iran, though he said that now is probably the most ripe time for negotiations given Iran’s weakness.

“I talked to Rubio, I talked to the administration,” Graham said. “Try diplomacy, but if you don’t get a commitment up front that Iran, from this day forward, abandons its stated desire to wipe out Israel, if they’re not willing to recognize the Jewish state, you’re wasting your time.”

Warner, on the other hand, argued that diplomacy is the only path to ensure Iran cannot enrich uranium for military purposes, as inspectors will need to be sent into the country to verify that.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said that “there’s a lot to [discuss]” about the war powers resolution and the potential timing for a vote on it — originally expected Thursday or Friday. “There’s just a lot to think about in that, and I’d have to hear from our colleagues about why, or when, to call that [up].”

Senators largely described the briefing as cordial and said the briefers had answered the questions posed to them.

Asked whether he was concerned that Hegseth and Rubio had provided political talking points or failed to address the substance of the issue, Kelly said that the two “did a good job. They answered our questions.”

But Murphy said he was “deeply worried about the politicization of intelligence.”