Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Friday it’s “premature” for anyone to be claiming that Iran will not try to continue its nuclear program.
“The Iranian regime had not made a decision to build a bomb, was not pursuing the mechanism of a bomb, even though it was enriching uranium,” he said in Friday comments on ABC News Live.
Over the past week, there has been heavy debate over whether the U.S. strikes in Iran on June 21 were necessary and over how successful they were at setting back or eliminating Iran’s nuclear program.
“Do they now want to be more like North Korea and be a nuclear state than a nuclear threshold state? We don’t know, and it will take time before we do know. So, I think it’s very premature for Sen. [Tom] Cotton [R-Ark.] or anyone else to be claiming victory here. There are just too many unknowns,” Schiff continued.
The New York Times and CNN reported that a preliminary classified intelligence report claimed the strikes merely set back Iran’s nuclear capacities by months, contradicting President Trump’s claim that the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been on the defensive this week and lashed out at a Fox News reporter who asked where the enriched uranium was. Trump also called to fire CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand for her reporting on the preliminary report.
In his comments, Schiff was responding to Cotton, the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, who had claimed on June 22 that Trump’s attacks “severely damaged Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.”
There has not been solid proof yet that the strikes completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program or Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium. This week, the House and Senate received a classified briefing, but Democrats still question the attacks’ success.
“I would say that that particular briefing left me with more concerns and a true lack of clarity on how we are defining the mission and the success of it,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said.
The administration has been adamant that the strikes were successful. Trump said he would consider bombing Iran again if new intelligence finds that the strikes did not destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacities.
