In the aftermath of U.S. strikes in Venezuela and the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro, uncertainty remains over whether the South American country’s ties to key U.S. adversaries and hostile posture toward Israel will change under interim President Delcy Rodríguez. 

During his time in power, Maduro’s Venezuela had been deeply embedded in a broader network of U.S. adversaries, particularly Iran, Russia and China. 

Dana Stroul, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explained that Venezuela “is a key supplier of cheap oil to China and has provided fertile ground for Iran’s terrorist network abroad.”

“Venezuela under Maduro was firmly part of the anti-American bloc of countries seeking to upend the post-WWII order,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at Israel Policy Forum. “Venezuela has particularly tight financial links with Iran and Hezbollah involving drugs and money laundering.”

The U.S. operation to oust Maduro was condemned by both China and Iran, who called it a violation of international law and demanded the illegitimate leader be freed. Experts have told Jewish Insider that the move potentially weakens Tehran’s hold in Latin America. 

“It’s no surprise that the key enablers of the Maduro regime have all rejected the U.S. actions in Venezuela,” said Stroul. “They are now faced with the challenge of filling the Western Hemisphere gap in their network of anti-U.S. stakeholders.” 

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said China and Iran will “miss having a Venezuelan partner to poke America in the eye from close range, launder their money, run their drugs and buy their weapons.”

Maduro also positioned himself as a consistent adversary of Israel, severing diplomatic relations in 2009 and repeatedly aligning Caracas with Palestinian causes and with Iran. After Venezuela’s disputed election in July 2024, Maduro accused “international Zionism” of orchestrating unrest in the country, claiming in a televised address that “all the communication power of Zionism, which controls all the social networks, the satellites and all the power, is behind this coup d’état.”

But despite Maduro’s capture and vows from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to return to the country and reject the authority of the interim president, the U.S. appears to be backing Rodríguez, who is closely aligned with Maduro and has shown a similar posture when it comes to Israel and U.S. adversaries, creating concerns over whether the direction of Venezuela’s foreign policy will change. 

Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the Trump administration’s apparent backing of Rodríguez is a “mistake” and that he doesn’t see “any reason to believe” she would depart from Maduro’s approach to U.S. adversaries. 

“I have concern that we still have most of the problematic elements of the regime in Venezuela remaining in place,” said Bowman. “[Rodríguez] has been part of a regime that has been hostile to the United States and cozy with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its terror proxies. If one were a betting person, you would say at a minimum that [Rodríguez] is going to continue to harbor those problematic views toward China, Russia and Iran, if not manifest them in policy.”

At a swearing-in ceremony on Monday, the new leader appeared to embrace the ambassadors of Iran, China and Russia. In an address to the nation on Sunday, Rodríguez claimed the U.S. operation to capture the illegitimate dictator had “Zionist undertones,” echoing the sentiments of her predecessor. 

“Rodríguez wasted little time before blaming Jews — or Zionists — for Maduro’s capture,” said David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A junior partner of Iran, China, and Russia’s axis of aggressors and host of the Hezbollah terrorist group, the regime of [former Venezuelan dictator Hugo] Chávez and Maduro will continue to be hostile to Israel and the West.”

Koplow said Venezuela’s tight bonds with Iran and Hezbollah create an “anti-Israel narrative that is wrapped up in any action regarding Venezuela.”

“The close U.S.-Israel relationship has created a decades-long anti-American and anti-Israel front that links opposition to one as part and parcel of opposition to the other in a larger anti-imperialist position that takes an anti-Western and anti-Zionist stance, and we are seeing that play out in the Venezuela situation as well,” said Koplow. 

Ruhe said Rodríguez’s claims were “sadly unsurprising,” and that “the Venezuelan government needs a perpetual enemy to justify its own rule.”

“The United States is the most obvious target, but leaders in Caracas scapegoat Jews and Israel, too,” said Ruhe, who added that the interim president’s initial statements “indicate key continuities with Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him.”

Bowman added that it is “not impossible” to change Rodríguez’s course of action away from Maduro’s past policy if it benefits her “personal political interests,” noting that it may take “an extraordinary set of incentives to get her to change course.” 

Lawmakers said on Monday that an additional round of U.S. strikes on Iran remains on the table if the regime makes strides in rebuilding its nuclear program or other malign activities, echoing recent warnings from President Donald Trump.

Trump also threatened last week that the U.S. would intervene to protect Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on nationwide demonstrations, as U.S. officials are watching closely while Tehran reportedly accelerates efforts to restore its ballistic missile capabilities — developments that could spark renewed conflict with Israel and potentially the United States.

Republican senators expressed confidence that the president would strike Iranian nuclear facilities a second time if the U.S. determined that Tehran was working to restore its nuclear program. 

“I think there’s a chance” Trump will strike Iran’s nuclear sites again, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider. “If they go forward again and start building up nuclear facilities, yeah, I think Trump’s going to bomb the hell out of them.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI, “President Trump is demonstrating that we have the most outstanding military in the world. And if he believes we have to hit Iran again, I believe he will do that.”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) agreed but dismissed the suggestion that Trump’s willingness to order the operation that deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last week signified that the president was looking to resume strikes against Iran. 

“I don’t think one’s related to the other,” Kennedy told JI. “I also think that if Iran starts back in terms of developing a nuclear weapon, or substantially tries to increase the number of missiles that they have, I think the president should hit them and I believe he will.”

Asked about Trump’s threat to intervene to prevent crackdowns on Iranian protesters, and rumors of a potential second round of Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) emphasized the threat of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.

“We should be considering what action may be appropriate if Iran progresses with its missile building and nuclear programs, which are obviously a pressing and dire threat to us and Israel,” Blumenthal said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a leading voice in the Senate for constraining presidential war powers, who is pushing to block further action in Venezuela, told JI that the U.S. should not be sending in its military in response to the protests, particularly without congressional debate and approval.

“This president should not willy-nilly use the press, use the military as his palace guard to go here, there and everywhere,” Kaine said. “Not Nigeria, not Iran, not Venezuela, not international waters, not Cuba, not Mexico, not Panama, not Greenland. It should be a debate with Congress.”

He added that a constituent, whose son is an Army Ranger, urged Kaine during the holidays to work to prevent unilateral military deployments by the administration. “And I am representing one of the most pro-military states in the country, and that’s what my state thinks,” Kaine explained.

President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Mark Levin on Tuesday that at the time of the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, he believed Tehran “would have had nuclear weapons in a period of four weeks.”

Calling in to Levin’s radio show, Trump said that, “if we didn’t [strike Iran], they would probably by this time, just about this time, have a nuclear weapon and they would have used it.”

Trump said that, despite news reports questioning his assessment of the efficacy of the strikes, “it turned out that” the impacts were “even more so than I said. It was obliteration.”

“The Atomic Energy Commission said, this place is gone. [Iran] can maybe start up, but they’re not starting up there,” Trump said of the Iranian nuclear facilities targeted in the operation. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission found that the U.S. strike on the Fordow nuclear facility “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure” and rendered it “inoperable,” though reports differ on the extent of the damage. 

The president told Levin that the U.S. Air Force pilots who conducted the strikes told him that they and their predecessors had been practicing the flight to Iranian airspace for 22 years.

Trump lauded his peacemaking abilities, saying, “I’ve settled six wars and we did the Iran night, wiped out their whole nuclear capability, which they would have used against Israel in two seconds if they had the chance.”

He called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war hero” and said, “I guess I am, too. … I mean, I sent those planes.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told Jewish Insider on Friday that he’s inclined to view the Trump administration’s strikes last month on Iran’s nuclear facilities as a “success,” if negotiations with Tehran resume and barring substantial future retaliation from Iran.

His comments largely echo sentiments shared earlier in the day by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) at the Aspen Security Forum, suggesting an increasing willingness by moderate, national security-minded Democrats to publicly acknowledge positive outcomes of the strikes, even if they maintain other concerns about the process that produced them.

“I will acknowledge the successfulness of the Israeli attacks and how back-foot the regime was. The fact that they didn’t launch the thousands of missiles,” Warner told JI on the sidelines of the forum. “I was concerned about an attack that didn’t bring Congress along. And I do think there was a huge process foul when the Gang of Eight wasn’t notified and the Republicans [were]. Trump[’s first administration] never did that — but I have never contested the success.”

Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s been pleased that there has not been ongoing asymmetric retaliation against the U.S. by Iran, such as cyber, sleeper cell or Iraqi militia attacks.

“If the current status quo is the same a year from now and it actually leads towards further negotiation — success.”

Warner, Coons and other top Democrats had cautioned the administration against unilateral action against Iran without congressional approval just days before the attack.

“Let’s make no doubt that the Iranian regime [are] bad guys, and that is why I’ve been such a consistent supporter of Israel,” Warner told JI.

“Iran’s, at least so far, been shown to be more of a paper tiger,” Warner said. “If we could just get to the resolution in Gaza, there really could be a fresh start.”

The senator said that his ongoing concern is how President Donald Trump has responded to the attacks, declaring that Iran’s nuclear program had been completely obliterated.

“The president, within two hours of the strike, set an arbitrary, almost impossible standard to meet, in terms of ‘total obliteration,’” Warner said. “To get the enriched uranium you’re going to need troops on the ground. And there are more than three sites — the vast majority [of the activity] was [at] those three, but there was some bad stuff happening elsewhere.”

He said the intelligence community had also been pressured to “contort itself to meet” the assessment Trump put forward.

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, Warner and other Democrats expressed frustration that the Trump administration took days to brief Congress about them. Warner said he’s received “some additional clarity” in the weeks since the strikes about their effects. But he said that without physically sending operatives into the facilities, it’s difficult to know for sure the impacts of the strikes.

“Other nations have made assessments that were more in the multiple months” of delay to Iran’s nuclear program, “but I’m not even sure that’s the right metric,” Warner said. “It was a success. So the question is, what’s next? That, I don’t have visibility on.”

Going forward, Warner emphasized the need for negotiations to bring International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back into Iran, adding that he wants to look further into the source of the delays in resuming talks.

Warner said he’s also seeking information on the timeline on which Iran would be able to build a less sophisticated nuclear device that could be delivered in a truck, rather than via a ballistic missile.

Though he noted that U.S. intelligence had not assessed that Iran was actively constructing a nuclear weapon, he said he had heard reports about an Israeli assessment that offered a different view and that he is looking further into it.

Asked about the fluid situation in Syria, in which Israel went, in the span of just a week, from floating normalization with the new Syrian government to bombing key government facilities in response to attacks on the Druze population, Warner indicated he’s still gathering information.

He said that Israel is “appropriately … very protective of its Druze population,” adding that he does not know at this point whether the Syrian government forces attacking the Druze population are doing so at the orders of that government. 

He said he’s hopeful that Israel and other parties involved will not miss an opportunity to find a peaceful resolution that could defuse a major longtime threat to Israel’s north.

Warner said he also wants to see Trump use his “enormous influence in Israel” to “[force] Bibi’s government into a return of the hostages, a ceasefire,” saying that would open up opportunities for transformational change in the region, including Saudi-Israeli normalization.

Warner said that while he’s been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel and the IDF deserve credit for their surprise accomplishments in taking down Iran’s proxy network and in their strikes against Iran itself.

“The [Jewish community’s] concern is real and understandable,” Warner said. He said that he has been struck by the “level of anger, animosity, vile things said” in anti-Israel protests that have targeted him — “and I’m not Jewish. And I can only imagine.”

“Iran’s, at least so far, been shown to be more of a paper tiger,” Warner said. “If we could just get to the resolution in Gaza, there really could be a fresh start.”

Asked how concerned he is about the possibility of homeland attacks against the Jewish community carried out by or in the name of Iran, Warner said that U.S. intelligence monitors potential threats fairly comprehensively, but indicated that he’s most worried about radicalized lone-wolf attacks, like those in Washington and Boulder, Colo.

“The [Jewish community’s] concern is real and understandable,” Warner said. He said that he has been struck by the “level of anger, animosity, vile things said” in anti-Israel protests that have targeted him — “and I’m not Jewish. And I can only imagine.”

Warner expressed frustration at the way that the Palestinian cause has crowded out other global issues on college campuses. He said that it “would be healthy” if young people “have the chance to get exposed to other things in the world,” offering as examples the conflict in Sudan — which he said has been more deadly than Gaza and Ukraine combined — and the military junta in Myanmar.

On the subject of the Houthis, who have ramped up attacks against commercial shipping and Israel in recent weeks, Warner called the group a “tough nut to crack,” noting that a protracted Saudi and Emirati campaign against the Iran-backed terrorist group in Yemen had failed to put the issue to bed. But he said that the U.S. can’t rule out further military action against the group.

“I hope that those plans would be kept classified and not shared … on a device that’s not secure,” he quipped, referencing the Signalgate scandal, which he said had prompted concern from the Israeli government.

******

Last week’s Aspen summit, which typically prioritizes bipartisan and nonpartisan discussion and solution-making, became particularly politicized after nearly all Trump administration speakers canceled their participation, followed by a handful of foreign and private sector leaders and former government officials disappearing from the week’s agenda.

The issue was a frequent topic of discussion both on the main stage and across the Aspen Meadows campus last week, seen by many as a sign of the ways that intense partisanship has infiltrated U.S. foreign policy, once seen as a less antagonistic space.

Warner’s own panel featured himself and Coons, but not a Republican senator, as has been tradition.

Nevertheless, Warner said that bipartisanship on foreign policy issues still lives in the Senate, noting that the Intelligence Committee had passed an Intelligence Authorization Act recently in a nearly unanimous vote.

Looking ahead, he said the “easiest place to rebuild that consensus is around China,” which he described as an unprecedented competitor. He said there has been a long and difficult journey across multiple administrations to refocus on China, but he said there has been bipartisan success in pushing back against China.

He also argued that the Trump administration’s transactional and short-sighted approach to foreign policy goes against a longtime bipartisan tradition of viewing U.S. international relationships as an effort in “mutual trust-building.”

He said that his Republican colleagues privately disagree with many of Trump’s more outlandish foreign policy efforts — like annexing Canada. “At some point, there’s got to be a break,” he responded, when pressed on the fact that some Republicans defend Trump’s policies publicly despite those private disagreements.

Warner told JI that the bill the Intelligence Committee recently passed would cut the size of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But, despite offering biting criticisms of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Warner said that the reform efforts are not a reflection of or specifically prompted by concerns about her conduct in the role.

“I’m very comfortable with the idea of bringing the mission closer to what it was originally, but also making sure that people who are at the ODNI get returned to their original home agency and don’t get [fired],” Warner said.

Clarifying comments that he made on the panel about close U.S. intelligence partners in the Five Eyes group curtailing their intelligence sharing with the United States, Warner said he was not aware of specific instances in which that had happened, but said that U.S. partners are concerned about the state of the U.S. intelligence community.

“The challenge about intelligence sharing is [that] this is all based on trust,” Warner said.

ASPEN, Colo. — Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday that the U.S. strikes on Iran had not been necessary and didn’t accomplish the fundamental goal of permanently stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

Asked whether he wished that President Joe Biden had carried through with plans to strike Iran before he left office, Sullivan argued that the situation at the time had been ripe for a diplomatic solution.

“During the transition, we handed off to the Trump administration. The situation in which Iran was at its weakest point since 1979,” Sullivan said. “Hezbollah had been functionally defeated. Assad had fallen. Its air defenses had been destroyed, and twice, Iran had tried to hit Israel with large salvos and missiles, and twice, with American help ordered by President Biden, Israel defeated those attacks. So Iran was weak and vulnerable.”

“In my view, a weak and vulnerable Iran was susceptible to a very good deal that would lock Iran’s program in a box for decades, not just set it back for a couple of years,” Sullivan continued.

He said that, after the strikes, a very similar deal remains necessary, “which is what I think President Trump will pursue, because the only way to permanently end Iran’s nuclear threat, I think, is through diplomacy.”

Sullivan’s perspective separates him from some Senate Democrats who spoke earlier in the day at Aspen, who described the strikes as successful even as they criticized the administration’s failure to coordinate with Congress and also emphasized that negotiations must follow.

ASPEN, Colo. — Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said Friday that the U.S. strikes on Iran could ultimately produce a positive outcome, a softening of the Delaware senator’s previous skepticism.

“The strike on Iran is one that I disagreed with because of the process, the lack of consultation with Congress, the partisan way that Republicans were notified at the most senior levels [and]Democrats were not,” Coons said at the Aspen Security Forum.

He said he also had not expected that the administration would be able to avoid significant Iranian retaliation and an escalating conflict.

“I frankly, did not believe that we would end up in the period we seem to be in where a counter-strike by Iran against American soldiers and interests has not yet come,” Coons continued.

But, he said, “if it actually ends up securing a movement towards regional peace and really knocking down Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, it’s a good thing. I mean, having Iran on its back foot and having the Iranian enrichment progress halted is something I’m not going to criticize.”

Coons added that he is concerned that the administration lacks a clear plan for the path forward or the commitment to sustain pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza and pursue “Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and recognition.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), speaking alongside Coons, argued that President Donald Trump had overplayed the strikes’ effectiveness and missed the opportunity to capitalize on them.

“I would also grant on the Iran strike that I had the same concerns, and I was Gang of Eight and did not get told,” Warner said, referring to the group of eight senior congressional leaders who are traditionally briefed on important intelligence matters by the executive branch. “In [Trump’s] effort to claim total credit, he turned something that was a success, but by saying within two hours ‘total obliteration’ when we didn’t even try to fully take out all the enriched uranium [storage] sites set a standard that was too high.”

“Setting Iran back dramatically was important,” Warner said. “But then you had everybody trying to kowtow to this level that is unattainable unless you have troops on the ground.”

He said the only way to ensure Iran’s nuclear program won’t continue is to reach a deal to allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, and that he expected Trump was pursuing that path after the strikes, but “it feels like that moment has already passed.”

The two Democratic senators also spoke about their concerns about the upcoming 2026 appropriations process, and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s recently reported comments that he wanted to see the process be less bipartisan. They raised concerns that Republicans would seek to walk back bipartisan appropriations deals through recissions down the road.

Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, railed against Director of National Intelligence Tusli Gabbard as untrustworthy and “not competent,” accusing her of politicizing the intelligence community and mishandling classified information. He said he believes that close intelligence partners are curtailing their information-sharing with the U.S. due to concerns about Gabbard and the Trump administration.

Addressing the Signalgate scandal, when top administration officials discussed operational plans against the Houthis in Yemen on an unsecured private messaging app, Warner said “the Israeli government was extraordinarily upset” about the incident.

The Pentagon’s chief spokesman said on Wednesday that the U.S. strikes against the Iranian nuclear program had set the program back by two years. His estimate appears to be the most specific information the Trump administration has shared on the extent of the damage caused by the strikes.

U.S. allies “share our sentiments about the degradation of Iran’s nuclear program and the fact we have degraded their program by one or two years … I think we’re thinking closer to two years,” Sean Parnell said at a press conference.

The administration has consistently claimed the strikes completely destroyed the nuclear program. During the briefing, Parnell said that he believed the combination of U.S. and Israeli strikes would be successful in deterring Tehran from continuing its nuclear program in the future. 

“We believe that sending bombers from Missouri, 37 hours on a mission, not a single shot fired on them, took a very strong psychological toll on the Iranian leadership,” Parnell said. “So, when you take the constellation of different things into consideration, we believe Iran’s nuclear capability has been severely degraded, perhaps even their ambition to build a bomb.”

Parnell’s remarks came hours after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told CBS News that the country’s nuclear facilities were “heavily and severely damaged.” Araghchi maintained that Iran’s enrichment equipment and knowledge base were not impacted, despite Israel assassinating several of the country’s senior nuclear scientists. 

Araghchi also said that Iran’s nuclear agency was still conducting damage assessments at the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. This was confirmed by geospatial imagery analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security, which showed crews working to gain access to the underground sections of the facilities.

In the aftermath of the U.S. strikes on Iran, officials and lawmakers are warning of potential threats from Iranian or Iran-affiliated “sleeper cells” embedded in the United States, a threat that could persist in spite of the ceasefire reached last week.

Experts say that there is a real threat that Iran could seek to target the U.S. government, Jewish communities or other targets within the United States, either through networks of operatives in the country or individuals radicalized online against Israel and Jews.

“Though we have not received any specific credible threats to share with you all currently, the threat of sleeper cells or sympathizers acting on their own, or at the behest of Iran, has never been higher,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a memo to CBP personnel earlier this month, asserting that thousands of known and unknown Iranian nationals are believed to have entered the United States.

Iran also reportedly sent a message to President Donald Trump days before the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, threatening to activate a terrorist network inside the United States if the U.S. struck Iran, NBC News reported.

A Department of Homeland Security public bulletin warned that the conflict in Iran could prompt attacks in the United States, and that a specific direction from Iran’s religious leadership could increase the likelihood of homegrown violent extremist mobilization. It also warned of potential cyberattacks.

Both before and after the U.S. strikes, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had delivered similar warnings. Jewish community security groups came together to caution institutions to take heightened precautions in response to the strikes to protect their physical safety and cybersecurity.

Matthew Levitt, the director of the counterterrorism and intelligence program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former counterterrorism official, told Jewish Insider that homeland threats are very real, though he argued that the term “sleeper cells,” which he said invokes spy thriller TV shows, can trivialize the threat.

Levitt said there are past cases of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked operatives being smuggled into the U.S. and surveying sensitive government and Jewish community locations. One such individual, after his arrest, told authorities he might have been instructed to attack those sites following a development like a direct American attack on Iran.

Levitt said that there have also been documented cases of groups such as Hezbollah setting up networks abroad to raise funds or spread propaganda, among other operations — but these individuals are generally not, as seen in popular culture, “a trigger puller who’s been sent here to wait until he’s ultimately told to pull the trigger.”

“There is real concern that if there was ever a time when Iran or Hezbollah was going to use these types of operatives, now would be it,” Levitt said, “especially since their other toolkits have generally been denied to them.”

Embedded foreign operatives operatives are likely few in number, Levitt added. A larger threat is from individuals in the United States who have been radicalized by anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda or could be prompted to violence by a potential future Shia religious edict.

The degradation of Iran’s proxies and limited effectiveness of its missile attacks leaves “the potential for international terrorist attacks” that are less easy to definitively trace to the Iranian government, but send a message that “they haven’t been beaten” and can still retaliate, Levitt said.

Oren Segal, the vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told JI that “this specific conflict speaks to concerns that intelligence agencies have talked about for years, about the idea that Iran or its proxies have people around the world.”

“It’s understandable for not only the Jewish community, but frankly, the broader community, to be feeling anxiety over whether these people are in place and what they might do,” Segal continued.

He said it’s difficult to know how many direct Iranian assets might be in the United States, but regardless of that, there’s an ongoing threat of individuals being radicalized online.

“You don’t have to look too far to see attacks that have happened, or plots in this country that were motivated or animated by ideology, as opposed to somebody coming in from abroad,” Segal said. “To me, that is always going to be the most omnipresent threat.”

He emphasized that violent language targeting the Jewish community has skyrocketed since recent antisemitic terrorist attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo., and “we just don’t have the luxury to ignore any of these threats.” 

Secure Community Network CEO Michael Masters, speaking on a recent webinar with FBI and DHS officials, warned of heightened risks to Jewish community groups that could emanate from a range of different sources, according to prepared remarks reviewed by JI.

Masters emphasized that Iran has a record of attempting operations inside the United States in recent years, and noted that U.S. military engagement against Iran has long been seen as a likely trigger for Iranian retaliatory attacks in the United States.

He said SCN believes that Jewish institutions and leaders would be top targets of Iranian proxies and criminals working with them. And he noted that within hours of the U.S. attacks on Iran, SCN had identified nearly 1,700 violent social media posts targeting the American Jewish community.

Levitt said that the “good news is” that IRGC and Hezbollah operatives in the country are likely under tight surveillance, noting that recent reporting indicates that the FBI has increased its focus on such groups in recent days.

“On the one hand, I’m sure that there are adversaries that would like to do something against America in America,” Levitt said. “It’s also a case that — there’s no such thing as 100% successful — we’re pretty good at law enforcement, intelligence and border security and all that here.” 

Many Republicans have linked the “sleeper cell” threat to increased levels of undocumented immigration during the Biden administration, a connection that Levitt largely dismissed.

“I don’t subscribe to the opinion that border security was so lax in previous administrations that all kinds of bad guys got in,” Levitt said. “More people were allowed in the country. It doesn’t mean that law enforcement wasn’t doing its job, and the actual [number of] cases we know about where bad guys were able to come into the country is very, very small.”

House lawmakers, like their Senate counterparts, remain divided over the U.S.’ strikes on Iran following a classified briefing Friday morning, with Republicans praising the strikes and most Democrats remaining skeptical.

“This is a historic time that we live in, and this has been an incredible two weeks,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters. “We delivered a major setback [to Iran’s nuclear weapons program[ that resulted in a feeble, face-saving response from Iran and immediately thereafter the ceasefire agreement.”

Johnson said that the U.S. expects that Iran will now join “direct, good-faith negotiations, not through third parties, not through other countries” and agree to a lasting peace deal.

“We’re on the verge of a real peace in the Middle East for the first time in a long time, and that’s because of the decisive leadership in the United States,” the House speaker said.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) suggested that the factors that prompted the strike would likely have spurred past Democratic presidents into action as well. He argued that the exact timeline of how long the strikes had delayed Iran’s nuclear program is not as relevant as whether the strikes, and the threat of further military action, will convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.

“Everyone agrees that it has set them back substantially. It has destroyed vast amounts of very valuable work, above and below ground,” Issa told Jewish Insider. “Now the question is has it done what it was asked to do, which is to give the Iranian leadership a decision to make — one in which they appear to be, and very well might, have abandoned their nuclear ambitions and be willing to come to the table in a different way than they were at the table for the 60 days that President Trump negotiated.”

He added that, given the widespread destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including the “above-ground stuff that they did need,” the U.S. and Israel would be able to know if Iran attempted to restart its nuclear program, and could stop them.

“If the Israelis are willing to not let them start building again, or punish them when they do, then, in fact, that’s what the Iranian leadership has,” Issa said. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, they’re pushed back one year. Can they get one year of building without the Israelis pushing it back again? And the answer clearly is no. So that’s their calculation today.”

“The debate is not about how long, anymore,” he continued. “It’s about, really, abandonment, or at least a pause in which they take no action.”

Asked whether the briefing had provided any clarity as to the Iranian leadership’s thinking on that issue, Issa declined to say, explaining that that information would be highly classified, but said he’d met with anti-regime Iranian diaspora activists the night before who believe that the 12-day Israeli bombardment was a “wake-up call” for the Iranian regime which could also embolden the Iranian people.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees, told reporters that the U.S. strikes had “destroyed” their targets — one that he emphasized was achieved without the need for a massive U.S. invasion force or a protracted war.

“This was a spectacular success, spectacular under any measure whatsoever, spectacular with no casualties,” Perry told JI.

He said the briefers had shared information about how much Iran’s nuclear program had been delayed, but said he was not able to share it publicly.

House Democrats remained more cautious about the situation.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee who is a lead sponsor of a war powers resolution aiming to block further U.S. military action against Iran without congressional approval, said that it is “pretty clear there was no imminent threat to the United States,” beyond the ongoing Iranian threat to the world.

“I have not  seen anything to suggest that the threat from the Iranians was radically different last Saturday than it was two Saturdays ago,” that would have justified a unilateral strike without the consent of Congress, Himes told JI.

“The objective here has been a little bit of a moving target,” Himes continued. “And I think we actually got a clear statement of objective today, which was, you know, the secretary of state said it. The objective was to set back or destroy Iranian, Iranian nuclear capability in the service of bringing them to the table. He was clear on that point.”

But he said that the briefing did not indicate that any diplomatic “overtures or discussions” are actually currently underway.

Himes said that the administration has been using “a lot of very sloppy adjectives, like ‘obliterated'” to describe the outcome of the strikes, and said it’s “still too early to tell exactly how much” damage the strikes had done.

He said that the briefing affirmed that the U.S.’ goal in the strikes was not to eliminate Iran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, which “must be accounted for at some point.”

Himes has been publicly frustrated about the administration’s failure to notify him and other senior Democrats about the strike beforehand — he told reporters that he learned about it on X while sitting on his couch on Saturday night — but said that the briefing was “a good start.”

Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told JI that “90% of what I heard in there is public,” when asked if anything he learned in the briefing had impacted his views on the necessity or justification for the strike.

Meeks is another lead sponsor of the war powers resolution, with Himes.

Another House Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive briefing, similarly told JI he “didn’t learn anything that was helpful in drawing a judgement,” and that there was “nothing that you walk away thinking, ‘Well, I learned this, and therefore I might consider whether I can draw an independent judgement on whether this was necessary or not.’”

“I got nothing out of it that I didn’t already think I had walking in,” they continued.

The Democrat said that military leaders had “brilliantly” executed the plan they were told to carry out, but there are still questions about the decision-making and judgement of the administration’s civilian leadership.

“One of the problems that you have … is when you pick such highly partisan heads of departments, you don’t know if the person has got sufficient experience to make certain judgements,” the Democrat said.

Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO), who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told JI, “It’s going to take time to get a full assessment and understanding exactly, exactly the extent of any damages and timelines and things of that nature.”

Bell added, “In order to effectively ensure that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, it’s going to have to be a coordinated effort. Obviously, you have to have credible military deterrence, as we’ve seen. Then there also has to be a commitment to the diplomatic side.”

He added that lawmakers agree on a bipartisan basis that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.

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.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told a gathering of American Jewish leaders on Wednesday that the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz had “destroyed” the sites.

Leiter also laid out the timeline of U.S. and Israeli coordination on the strikes, which he said stretched back to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington in February, though he said it only became clear in the days before Israel began its strikes in Iran that the U.S. was likely to participate. And he argued that any deal with Iran must include, as a precondition, that Iran no longer seek the elimination of the Jewish state.

“There’s this little debate out there, you get into the etymology of the English language,” Leiter quipped, addressing ongoing questions about the extent of the success of U.S. operations and by how long they had delayed Iran’s nuclear program. “What is the difference between ‘elimination’ and ‘obliteration,’ ‘setting them back for years’ [and] ‘destruction.’”

Leiter did not delve into specifics of his assessment or what it was based on.

The comments, at a gathering organized by the Jewish Federations of North America and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, came after the leak of a preliminary, reportedly low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency assessment indicating that the strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a matter of months. Other reports indicated that some of Iran’s nuclear material and centrifuges may have survived the operations.

The Trump administration forcefully denounced the DIA assessment, insisted that the nuclear program has been fully destroyed and published an Israeli assessment indicating that the Iranian program had been set back further.

Leiter addressed the Senate Republican Conference over lunch on Wednesday, and delivered a similar assessment.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told Jewish Insider that Leiter said the attacks had been “very successful.” 

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told reporters that Leiter said the operations had set Iran’s nuclear program back by “years.”

Leiter also told the audience of Jewish leaders that Netanyahu had presented Israeli plans to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during his first visit in February. Subsequent reports had indicated that Trump vetoed the plan, at the time.

The Israeli envoy said, “We laid out in front of the administration what the possibilities were. We did not ask for a green light. We made it very clear that this is existential, that this is 1938. The only difference is that in 1938, we were dependent. We were helpless.”

Leiter said Israeli officials had presented Israel’s capabilities and plans, and the potential options for working with the U.S.

“We moved ahead, first with minimal planning together, then with extensive planning together,” Leiter said. “It wasn’t until a few days before we launched Operation Rising Lion that it was clear that the president was moving in the direction of making sure that this strike to eliminate the annihilationist threat to the State of Israel was something the United States would participate in, in full.”

The Israeli ambassador also said that Israel was at the “cusp of the possibility of taking out the Iranian regime” but said, “we’re not in the business of regime change. Regime change has to come bottom-up, not top-down. We can’t force it.”

He said that, if the U.S. and Iran agree to a deal going forward, there should be “an elemental demand that Iran first say it is not going to pursue the annihilation of the State of Israel, the Jewish people.”

Leiter said he would also be meeting on Wednesday with a group of six Democrats who had supported efforts to withhold arms from Israel.

“I tell them, ‘Look, I’ll go into the lion’s den. Just invite me. You want to talk? I’ll talk,’” Leiter explained. “I know that I’m going in front of the firing squad. But that’s my job. I’m going to make the case because I know that our case is the most justified case in the annals of human history.”

Looking at the Middle East broadly, Leiter said Israel has “changed history” after Oct. 7, 2023, having degraded Hamas and Hezbollah and helped to bring about the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

“We have someone now [in Syria] who’s at least saying the right things, who’s playing the right music,” Leiter said, a notable turn from the Israeli government’s initial skepticism and hostility toward the government led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former jihadist. “We don’t know where it’s going to go, we have to be cautious, but it’s moving in the right direction.”

Addressing the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum, Leiter emphasized the intrinsic ties between the Jewish people and Israel, and said, “at the core of this murderous, annihilationist antisemitism is the rejection of the very right of the Jewish people to have a right to sovereignty. You cannot fight antisemitism without fighting anti-Zionism.”

He said that the Jewish community cannot let antisemites — “Candace Owens or somebody from the other side, whatever it is” — dictate to them what Judaism is or “disembowel Judaism from Zionism.” 

“Don’t go down the slippery slope. Don’t go down. We are not an apartheid state. We are not genocidal murderers,” Leiter said. “My son would be alive today if what they’re accusing us of doing, we do. We don’t starve people and we don’t do ethnic cleansing, and we’ve lost countless soldiers because of the approach we take to warfare.”

Leiter’s son died in combat in Gaza.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the U.S. and Iran will hold a meeting next week, but said that he doesn’t think reaching a nuclear agreement with the country is necessary in the aftermath of U.S. strikes on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.

Speaking at a press conference before leaving the NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump said, in response to a question asking if he was interested in restarting nuclear negotiations with Iran, “I’m not.”

“The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done,” Trump continued. “And you know, I could get a statement that they’re not going to go nuclear. We’re probably going to ask for that, but they’re not going to be doing it anyway.” He said he had asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to draw up a “little agreement for them to sign, because I think we can get them to sign it. I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Trump announced that the U.S. is “going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement, I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary. I mean, they had a war they fought. Now they’re going back to their world. I don’t care if I have an agreement or not. The only thing we’d be asking for is what we were asking for before, about ‘we want no nuclear,’ but we destroyed the nuclear. … I said ‘Iran will not have nuclear.’ Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up to kingdom come. And so I don’t feel very strongly about it.”

The president said that he “doesn’t see [Iran] getting back involved in the nuclear business anymore” but “if it does, we’re always there. It won’t be me, it’ll be somebody else, but we’re there. We’ll have to do something about it.”

Asked if he is “giving up” on his maximum-pressure campaign against Iran after he announced that China can again buy oil from Iran, contravening congressionally approved sanctions legislation, Trump said that he wanted Tehran to use the funds to rebuild. 

“No, look, they just had a war. They fought it bravely. I’m not giving up. They’re in the oil business. I mean, I could stop it if I wanted. I could sell China the oil myself. I don’t want to do that. [Iran is] going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen.”

Speaking a day after an initial Pentagon assessment was leaked stating that the U.S. and Israel did not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program and amid concerns that some nuclear material may have been smuggled elsewhere before the strikes, Trump said, “I think all of the nuclear stuff is down there, because it’s very hard to remove. And we did it very quickly. When they heard we were coming, it was, you know, you can’t move. It’s very hard, very dangerous, actually, to move. And they also knew we were coming. So I don’t think too many people want to be down there knowing we’re coming with the bunker-busters, as we call them. … We think it’s covered with granite, concrete and steel.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the report was a “low assessment,” meaning “low confidence in the data in that report. Why is there low confidence? Because all of the evidence of what was just bombed by 12 30,000-pound bombs is buried under a mountain — devastated and obliterated. So if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow, you better get a big shovel and go really deep, because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated.”

Trump read out an assessment by the Israel Atomic Energy Agency, released today, that said, “The devastating U.S. strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come. This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.”

“Which it won’t,” Trump added.

President Donald Trump and other administration officials denied a report that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities had only set Iran’s nuclear program back by several months, continuing to insist the nuclear sites were “completely destroyed” and “obliterated.”

CNN reported on Tuesday night that an early intelligence assessment by the Pentagon found that the core components of Iran’s nuclear program were still intact and the regime could continue seeking a nuclear bomb, according to seven people briefed on the matter. 

Speaking from the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump told reporters, “That was a perfect operation. … And also, and nobody’s talking about this, we shot 30 Tomahawks from submarines … and every one of those Tomahawks hit within a foot of where they were supposed to hit. Took out a lot of buildings that Israel wasn’t able to get. … This was a devastating attack and it knocked them for a loop. And, you know, if it didn’t, they wouldn’t have settled. … If that thing wasn’t devastated, they never would have settled.”

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing that ended that war,” he said later. “This ended that with the war. If we didn’t take that out, they’d be fighting right now.”

“It was obliteration,” he said of the U.S. strikes in Iran. “And you’ll see that, and it’s going to come out. Israel is doing a report on it, I understand. … You know, they have guys that go in there after the hit, and they said it was total obliteration.”

“I don’t think they’ll ever do it again,” Trump continued, referring to Iran’s enrichment of uranium. “They just went through hell. I think they’ve had it. The last thing they want to do is enrich.” 

The president also posted on Truth Social earlier, saying, “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking to Fox News shortly after the CNN report was released, called the leak “treasonous” and said, “There is no doubt that it [Iran’s nuclear program] was obliterated. So the reporting out there that in some ways suggests that we didn’t achieve the objective is just completely preposterous.” He said it was “not even conceivable” that Iran could still achieve a nuclear weapon within months.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly denied the report but offered a more measured assessment of Iranian nuclear capabilities, telling Politico on the sidelines of the NATO Summit on Wednesday that, “The bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action. That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it.” 

White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, “This alleged ‘assessment’ is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. … Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

A CNN spokesperson said in a statement to Jewish Insider, “CNN stands by our thorough reporting on an early intelligence assessment of the recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which has since been confirmed by other news organizations. The White House has acknowledged the existence of the assessment, and their statement is included in our story.”

David Albright, president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on the Iranian nuclear program, called the report “hard to believe” and “misleading.” Among other analyses, he said Iran has “likely lost close to 20,000 centrifuges at Natanz and Fordow, creating a major bottleneck in any reconstitution effort. Moreover, there has been considerable damage to Iran’s ability to build the nuclear weapon itself.”

According to President Donald Trump, Iran’s nuclear program is finito. 

“Obliteration is an accurate term!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “Monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran.” He said on Monday that the three sites hit by U.S. strikes on Sunday morning “were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that the U.S. “took out” Iran’s nuclear program over the weekend.

Nuclear experts aren’t as confident. What, exactly, remains of Iran’s nuclear program — which, just weeks ago, Israeli officials said was on the precipice of being able to produce a nuclear weapon — remains an open question. (A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) 

Experts agree that the combination of Israel’s strikes that began a week and a half ago, aided by the U.S. military’s intervention on Sunday, has done significant damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But uncertainty lingers about the status of the enriched uranium that had been housed at Fordow, the major Iranian nuclear facility hidden under a mountain that the U.S. struck with bunker-buster bombs this weekend. 

Reports suggest Tehran may have removed the nuclear materials from Fordow and hidden them elsewhere in Iran. 

“I think that we can assume that damage was done, but it’s going to take a long time, and we may never know entirely the extent of the damage,” said Tressa Guenov, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who dealt with international security affairs at the Pentagon in the Biden administration. Iran’s claim that it moved the uranium “could be real, or it could be a strategy to keep things ambiguous,” she added. 

David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector, told The Free Press that “any highly enriched uranium at Fordow was likely gone before the attack.” 

Even with the possibility that the enriched uranium was moved from Fordow, experts agreed that Iran’s nuclear program has been left reeling by the Israeli and American military actions.

“Israelis believe that they dealt together with the U.S. … a really serious blow to the Iranian nuclear program, took it back by, some say, two years,” Michael Herzog, who until January was Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said on Monday. But, he cautioned, it’s “premature to make that assessment.” Elliott Abrams, a longtime Republican foreign policy advisor who served as Trump’s special representative for Iran in Trump’s first term, said Iran is “now years away” from being able to make a nuclear weapon. 

And the extent of the damage goes beyond just the nuclear program. 

“Iran is losing its nuclear weapons option, and we have applied military force to ensure that,” said Dennis Ross, a former State Department official who worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations. “You have a military that has been decapitated. You have a Revolutionary Guard that has been decapitated. You have people in both those leaderships that have been basically together for the last 30 years. They’re not so easy to replace. You have a leadership that doesn’t know who it can trust. You have a leadership that is completely in hiding.” 

Even if Iran’s nuclear weapons program was set back several years, that is not the same thing as obliterating its ability to create a nuclear weapon, as Trump claimed. Vice President JD Vance repeated that statement several times in a Monday night interview on Fox News, where he discussed the newly announced ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran and asserted that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.” 

But fully dismantling Iran’s nuclear weapons program might not even be a realistic goal.

“We know that no military operation on its own will completely eliminate the Iranian nuclear program,” Dana Stroul, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who oversaw Middle East policy at the Pentagon in the Biden administration, said earlier Monday.

During the war, Israeli officials hinted that they want to see regime change in Iran. Yet by announcing the ceasefire on Monday night, the Trump administration underscored that the goal of its military operation was to set back Iran’s nuclear program, and not target Iran’s leadership. 

“Absent a revolution in Iran that brings in a friendlier regime, where you could verify the moth-balling of [nuclear] sites and this dismantlement of the program, I don’t think you could ever say for certain that the program is over,” Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Jewish Insider on Monday. 

Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday evening that, once the fighting ceases, “the War will be considered, ENDED,” and that both sides “will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL.” He did not share whether either side had to abide by any particular demands, or whether the agreement would mark a return to the negotiating table. 

In my years of covering politics, it’s pretty rare for mainstream Jewish organizations to be wildly out of step with the predominant views of the Democratic Party. But in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s decision to order bunker-busting strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend, the views of the institutional Jewish community and many rank-and-file Democrats couldn’t have been more divergent.

Consider: The American Jewish Committee’s CEO Ted Deutch, a former Democratic congressman, praised Trump’s decision and called it “an historic moment for the United States, Israel and the world.” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt thanked Trump for “holding true to the commitment that the United States will not stand by and watch the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and antisemitism develop nuclear weapons.”

Even the more-partisan Democratic pro-Israel group DMFI, which normally can be counted on to criticize the president, rejected its own party’s predominant view that further congressional approval should have been received before the strikes. “Iran was unwilling to give up its nuclear program through diplomatic negotiations across three different administrations, so the United States was left with no choice but to take decisive military action,” DMFI CEO Brian Romick said.

By contrast, it was tough to find many Democratic lawmakers — even among the many who are typical allies of Israel — to offer praise of the strikes severely degrading Iran’s nuclear program. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who earlier this month recorded a video taunting Trump for “folding” against Iran, criticized the president for carrying out the strikes without congressional authority. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), one of the strongest pro-Israel stalwarts in the Democratic Party, likewise withheld support for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities while also reiterating her view that Iran should never be able to obtain a nuclear weapon. Like Schumer, she called on more congressional involvement.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), another strong pro-Israel ally running as the moderate Democrat in a Michigan Senate primary, sounded wary about the U.S. decision to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. “The last thing our country needs is to be involved in another foreign war,” she said, echoing rhetoric from more progressive voices in the party.

To be sure, there have been a handful of Democrats sounding like the pro-Israel lawmakers that once dominated the party. Just look at the comments from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ),  Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL),  Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), all of whom described the all-too-urgent threat that a nuclear Iran posed to Israel and the world.

As one pro-Israel Democrat put it to JI: There were notably more Democrats putting out statements cheering anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil being released from immigration detention than those expressing solidarity with Israel in its time of great need.

The debate over dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been a fraught one within the Democratic Party, ever since former President Barack Obama cut a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 that many pro-Israel leaders found too accommodating towards the Islamic Republic. There were very messy internal divisions in the party back then as well.

But with public support for Israel among Democratic voters waning, according to recent polling, it looks like it’s getting harder for even sympathetic Democrats to vocally support the position, as Landsman did, that preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is a step towards peace. It’s possible to quibble with the administration’s lack of legislative outreach while also acknowledging the positive end result.

On national security, this is becoming a moment of truth for the Democratic Party at large, which is trying to moderate its record to win back power in Washington, but still is beholden to its activist base. The fact that Zohran Mamdani, a radical anti-Israel candidate defending the slogan “globalize the intifada” is running as competitively as he is in tomorrow’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary, is a sign of where the party could be headed without more mainstream leaders speaking out.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a former House majority leader, backed the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a position that puts him at odds with many other Democrats in Congress, including current Democratic leadership.

“The U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan yesterday was essential to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon,” Hoyer, the longtime former No. 2 House Democrat, said in a statement released on Sunday.

He said that Iranian leaders had made clear they were not going to comply with U.S. demands to dismantle their nuclear program and had been censured by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Israel believed that Iran was on the verge of achieving its goal and struck Iranian nuclear sites,” Hoyer said. “Yesterday, the United States did the same, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. That was in keeping with our stated position against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

The operation, he said, “helped counter” the Iranian nuclear threat, “but America must continue working to close Iran’s path to nuclear weapons permanently.”

Hoyer characterized the strikes as a “limited, one-time operation.” Many other Democrats have raised concerns that the operation violated congressional war powers.

“These strikes were designed to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program, but neither the U.S., nor Israel, nor any other nation wants to go to war with the Iranian people, or Iran itself,” he continued.

Hoyer has long been among the most steadfast pro-Israel Democrats in Congress.

At the same time, Hoyer argued that “the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran became this dire because the Trump Administration chose to back out” of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

A handful of other pro-Israel congressional Democrats have come out largely in support of the strike since it took place.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) described the raid as “critical and decisive action to protect America, and freedom and democracy at home and around the world.”

“The destruction of Iran’s nuclear program is essential to ultimate peace in the Middle East,” Gottheimer continued. “This is not a Democratic or Republican issue — dealing with the Iranian threat is central to America’s national security.”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was one of the first Democrats to support the strike against Iran Friday night. “The world can achieve peace in the Middle East, or it can accept a rogue nuclear weapons program—but it cannot have both.

The decisive destruction of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant prevents the dangerous spread of nuclear weapons in the world’s most combustible region.  No one truly committed to nuclear nonproliferation should mourn the fall of Fordow,” Torres wrote on X.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said “this was the correct move” by Trump and said he’s “grateful for and salute the finest military in the world.”

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said, “Today, the President made what appears to be a targeted strike to defend the U.S., Israel, and allies throughout the region and the world” and that he’s hopeful that Iran “no longer has the capabilities to continue its nuclear program.”

He said Iran must now commit to negotiations and make a deal. But he also warned against continued military action without congressional approval.

“I am also a firm believer in congressional authority & oversight. Any offensive action must come to Congress for a vote,” Moskowitz said. “I hope this is contained, but we are living in unprecedented times—and it’s critical our leaders work on a bipartisan basis to protect our nation.”

Asserting that President Donald Trump “owes Congress and the American people a strategy for U.S. engagement” in the Middle East, top Senate Democrats on Wednesday cautioned against potential U.S. strikes on Iran and argued that the president would need congressional authorization to conduct such an operation.

The signatories to the statement include Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Patty Murray (D-WA), Jack Reed (D-RI) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrats on several key Senate committees and subcommittees. The statement suggests that a direct U.S. military intervention in Iran would see little support among Senate Democrats.

Trump has indicated that he is considering carrying out strikes inside Iran but has yet to make a final decision.

“​​Intensifying military actions between Israel and Iran represent a dangerous escalation that risks igniting a broader regional war,” the statement reads. “As President Trump reportedly considers expanding U.S. engagement in the war, we are deeply concerned about a lack of preparation, strategy, and clearly defined objectives, and the enormous risk to Americans and civilians in the region.”

The lawmakers said they are “alarmed by the Trump administration’s failure to provide answers to fundamental questions” and demanded that the president seek authorization from Congress “if he is considering taking the country to war.” 

“Congress has not provided authorization for military action against Iran – we will not rubberstamp military intervention that puts the United States at risk,” the Democrats said. “Our foremost duty is to safeguard American citizens wherever they reside and to protect our troops serving on the front lines. The United States cannot sleepwalk into a third war in as many decades. Congress has a critical role to play in this moment.” 

Legislation has been introduced in the Senate to bar military action against Iran, which could come up for a vote as soon as next week.

“[Trump] owes Congress and the American people a strategy for U.S. engagement in the region. We need a clear, detailed plan outlining the goals, risks, cost, and timeline for any proposed mission, as well as how he will ensure the safe evacuation of Americans in harm’s way all across the region,” they continued. “We demand immediate, detailed answers on these and other urgent matters to determine the way forward.

At the same time, the statement describes Iran as a threat to the U.S. and its allies that “must not be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon.” 

“The United States stands firm in our support for the continued defense of Israel, our partner and ally,” they said. “Our commitment to Israel remains ironclad and we urge the administration to defend Israel against the barrage of Iranian airstrikes, including through the provision of additional air defense capabilities.”