Hegseth fires general behind Iran strike damage report that angered Trump

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, whose report contradicted statements that Iran's nuclear program was 'obliterated.'

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The firing is the latest upheaval in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the U.S. strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Republican president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated,” rejected the report.

In a news conference following the June strikes, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.

“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said then.

Kruse’s ouster was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

Trump has a history of removing government officials whose data and analysis he disagrees with. Earlier this month, after a lousy jobs report, he fired the official in charge of the data. His administration has also stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites.