Iran nuclear damage assessment divides Washington

US President Donald Trump has rejected a cautious early assessment by his own Pentagon on damage to Iranian nuclear sites and Democrats have doubted the success of air strikes, as Iran policy increasingly divides Washington.

"(The pilots) knew the Success was LEGENDARY, and then, two days later, they started reading Fake News by CNN and The Failing New York Times," Trump posted on social media on Wednesday.

He linked the success of the strikes to his own diplomatic prowess, hitting back at news outlets which published a leaked preliminary assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency saying the air strikes only set Iran's nuclear program by months.

Trump said a press conference on the attacks' impact would prove "irrefutable."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to acknowledge the report's veracity but said leakers had "an agenda."

"I would say that story’s a false story, and it’s one that really shouldn’t be re-reported because it doesn’t accurately reflect what’s happening," Rubio told Politico.

The spirited defense came after Trump rounded on Republican critics of his decision to attack without Congressional authorization.

Sidelined Democrats clap back

As the nuclear attack unfolded, the Trump administration briefed Capitol Hill majority leaders from his own Republican Party but not Democrats.

The president's sharing of intelligence along party lines, if confirmed, would break with precedent of most of the recent decades where the commander-in-chief shared information on bipartisan lines.

Lawmakers from the minority criticized the move and wondered aloud what the strikes had accomplished.

"Iran’s highly enriched uranium could be moved in as little as 10 carloads," Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia wrote on X.

"Do we really have confidence we know where this is? Do we really have confidence it wasn’t moved before our strikes?"

During two months of US-Iran talks, Democrats had largely remained silently supportive of Trump's diplomatic effort to end Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado accused the Trump administration of withholding classified information on Iran from Congress.

"The nation's intelligence agency leadership must attend tomorrow's Senate briefing in addition to Secretaries Hegseth and Rubio," he posted on X.