• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

The Truth About Obliterategate

The president rushed to insist on the complete and total success of his Iran strikes without waiting for a full assessment; his critics similarly rushed to declare he must be wrong. The reality is that the full picture will take time to emerge—but in the meantime, intelligence is being further politicized.

trump hegseth
The real problem isn’t that the media is asking questions about the efficacy of the attack. It’s the politicization of intelligence—which is incredibly dangerous, as Iraq War veterans like Hegseth should know. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Julia Ioffe
June 26, 2025

After an early U.S. intelligence assessment cast doubt on whether last weekend’s military strike destroyed Iran’s nuclear program or merely set it back a few months, an enraged Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held a press conference this morning to push back. He berated the press for fixating on whether or not “Operation Midnight Hammer” had indeed “totally obliterated” Iran’s Fordow facility instead of reporting on the heroic and amazing pilots who executed the bombing run. Had anyone written stories, he wondered, about just how hard it is to fly a B-2 for so damn long? These pilots, the SecDef claimed last night in The Hague, were “very upset” at how the press was ostensibly questioning their work.