Letters from an American - June 25, 2025

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

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June 25, 2025. At The Hague, a city in the Netherlands, today for a summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, Trump showed that he cannot let go of the intelligence assessment that his military strikes against Iran had set back Iran's nuclear ambitions only by a few months. He appears determined to convince Americans that he has solved the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions overnight. It's gone for years, years, he said. And then, turning to the news outlets that reported the early conclusions of Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, that the hits delayed production of a nuclear weapon by only a few months, he said, CNN is scum.

MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They're bad people. They're sick. And what they've done is they've tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less. Trump insisted that the U.S. hits caused total obliteration. He claimed he did not want the recognition of the effectiveness of the hits for himself, but rather for the military. Trump equated the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities with the U.S. bombing of the Japanese

cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the NATO summit that the FBI had launched a criminal investigation into who had leaked the DIA report, complaining that CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success. Later in the morning, Trump's social media account posted that CNN should fire Natasha Bertrand, one of the CNN journalists who broke the story that the attacks had done less damage than Trump claimed.

Mark Caputo of Axios reported this afternoon that the Trump administration will limit the classified information it shares with Congress after the leak of the DIA assessment, even though there is currently no evidence tying that leak to Congress. A senior White House official said, we are declaring a war on leakers. Stefan Newcam and Andrew Solander of Axios reported that congressional Democrats, already angry that the administration delayed briefing Congress about the strikes on Iran,

passed the legal deadline for such a briefing. See the announcement that the White House will limit the legal deadline for such a briefing, see the announcement that the White House will limit the information it provides to Congress as an attempt to hide reality in order to bolster Trump's narrative. A senior House Democrat told the Axios reporters, this is from a group of people who use signal about actual war plans? On the Senate floor, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, said, the administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters

of national security. Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now, abroad. Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said, The law requires the Congressional Intelligence Committees to be kept fully and currently informed, and I expect the intelligence community to comply with the law." Tomorrow the White House will brief senators on the strikes. Notably, it is not sending Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified

in March that the intelligence community did not think Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. Instead, it is sending Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine. Ratcliffe, not Gabbard, will represent the intelligence community.

Today, Ratcliffe appeared to walk back Trump's claims that the strikes had totally obliterated Iran's nuclear program, saying instead they had severely damaged the program. On his social media platform tonight, Trump continued his attacks on CNN and announced that tomorrow morning, Hegseth and military representatives will hold a major news conference to fight for the dignity of our great American pilots. He claimed those patriots were very upset when they started reading fake news by CNN and the failing New York Times. They felt terribly.

The news conference will prove both interesting and irrefutable. Enjoy! interesting and irrefutable. Enjoy. There is no evidence that anyone sees the correction of Trump's extreme claims as an attack on the pilots who flew the mission, or that the pilots see the correction in that way. Laura Rosen of Diplomatic notes that the strikes

might have convinced Iran to abandon negotiations and commit to building a nuclear weapon. Rosen quotes former top European Union Iran nuclear negotiator Enrique Mora, who wrote, this unprecedented strike has shown for the second time the Islamic regime that nuclear diplomacy is reversible, fragile, and vulnerable to changes in leadership in Washington. There will not be a third time.

Maura continued, if Iran now decides to move toward a bomb, it will do so following a clear strategic logic. No one bombs the capital of a nuclear-armed country. June 21, 2025 may go down in history not as the day the Iranian nuclear program was destroyed, but as the day a nuclear Iran was irreversibly born. Tonight, on his social media site, Trump's account called for Israel to abandon its trial of Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, calling it a ridiculous witch hunt. Trump claimed that Netanyahu was a partner in something that nobody thought was possible, a complete elimination of potentially one of the biggest and most powerful nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, and it was going to happen soon. Trump called for the trial to be canceled immediately or a pardon given to a great hero. He continued, it was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.