Damning intel leak exposes how major Trump goal fell flat

President Donald Trump returns to the White House, after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran, in Washington, D.C., March 1, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump has been hit with a "damning intel leak," according to a report from The Daily Beast, exposing the fact that his own military knows just how badly his main goal has fallen flat.

Despite repeatedly claiming a decisive victory, the reality of the war in Iran has proven much more dire for Trump, as he has failed to consistently define a strategic end goal and has been outmaneuvered by Iranian leaders during peace talks. One of the justifications he has attempted to give for the conflict has been to destroy Iran's capability of producing a nuclear weapon — something he already claimed to have accomplished with airstrikes last summer.

This week, however, a leaked memo showed the military officials suspect that Iran's timeline for a hypothetical nuclear weapon is unchanged, sinking one of Trump's biggest supposed goals. As The Daily Beast explained in a Tuesday report, officials currently believe Iran is as close to having a weapon as they were after last summer's airstrikes. Those strikes are thought to have set the Iranian nuclear program back just a year, counter to Trump's claim that the program was entirely "obliterated."

"It represents one of several motives Trump has cycled between since launching his February attacks against Iran," The Daily Beast explained. "Others have included liberating the Iranian people, affecting a change in leadership, and, more confusingly, protecting U.S. military assets in the region from retaliatory strikes in the event Iran comes under attack."

With the damage done to the Iranian nuclear program stalling out, reports indicate that the only means left for the U.S. military to do more damage would require "destroying or removing” the country's “remaining stockpile of highly enriched uranium." Experts suggest that this would need a much more substantial and prolonged military engagement that could create many more casualties.

"Andrew Weber, an Obama-era nuclear weapons adviser who helped de-nuke the former Soviet Union, told The Telegraph earlier in March that any efforts to do so without a peace deal in place would take several weeks and likely see thousands of U.S. service personnel killed," The Daily Beast continued. "It also remains unclear when any such de-nuking push might happen. A fragile ceasefire mediated by Pakistan has been in place since early April, but has so far failed to yield a deal for a lasting end to the conflict."

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