Obliterated? Not Exactly

Apparently, Trump went TACO on Iran and just approved the bare minimum to make Bibi happy:

One of the three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran struck by the United States last month was mostly destroyed, setting work there back significantly. But the two others were not as badly damaged and may have been degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to, according to a recent U.S. assessment of the destruction caused by the military operation, five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the assessment told NBC News.

The assessment, part of the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to determine the status of Iran’s nuclear program since the facilities were struck, was briefed to some U.S. lawmakers, Defense Department officials and allied countries in recent days, four of those people said.

NBC News has also learned that U.S. Central Command had developed a much more comprehensive plan to strike Iran that would have involved hitting three additional sites in an operation that would have stretched for several weeks instead of a single night, according to a current U.S. official and two former U.S. officials.

President Donald Trump was briefed on that plan, but it was rejected because it was at odds with his foreign policy instincts to extract the United States from conflicts abroad, not dig deeper into them, as well as the possibility of a high number of casualties on both sides, one of the current officials and one of the former officials said. “We were willing to go all the way in our options, but the president did not want to,” one of the sources with knowledge of the plan said.

This explains why he lied so blatantly about the sites being obliterated. It was his decision to take the action least likely to result in success. All risk, little reward. So he immediately spun it as a major victory in the hopes that everyone would accept that regardless of the facts when they emerged.

Trying to keep MAGA happy is getting really complicated for Dear Leader, isn’t it?