Washington Post: US Defense Secretary fires Pentagon intelligence chief over Iran
The Washington Post reported that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Defense Intelligence Agency Director General Jeffrey Cross, who prepared the internal report on US attacks on Iran.
The dismissal came after an agency report on US military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, which stated that they didn’t destroy the infrastructure of the Iranian nuclear program.
Two sources explained that the official justification for the dismissal was “loss of confidence,” and that Hegseth confirmed that “Cross will no longer serve as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency”.
Cross’s dismissal comes several months after details of the initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon’s primary intelligence arm) regarding the military strikes that targeted three key nuclear sites in Iran last June were leaked.
The assessment contradicted claims made by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Last June, Hegseth said an investigation had been opened into the leak to the media of a preliminary report prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency for the Pentagon regarding US attacks on Iran.
Hegseth confirmed that the US airstrikes on Iran destroyed its nuclear capabilities.
He pointed out that media reports about the leak of the intelligence report, which he described as “top secret,” were “politically motivated”.
A preliminary intelligence assessment prepared in the United States stated that the US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities didn’t destroy the infrastructure of the Iranian nuclear program, but rather likely delayed it by only a few months.
