According to U.S. media, according to two sources and a White House official, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency's initial intelligence assessment of the damage caused by the U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities angered President Donald Trump.
General Jeffrey Krus is no longer the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to sources who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
This dismissal is the latest turmoil in the U.S. military and intelligence community, and it occurred months after details of the preliminary assessment were leaked to the media. The report found that Iran's nuclear program had only regressed by a few months due to the U.S. attack, contradicting statements made by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Republican president declared that Iran's plan would be "completely and totally destroyed," but rejected the report.
At a press conference after the June attack, Hegseth criticized the media for focusing on the preliminary assessment, but provided no direct evidence that Iranian nuclear production facilities had been destroyed.
"You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it eradicated - pick your word. This was a historically successful strike," Hegseth said at the time.
The Washington Post earlier reported on Krus's dismissal.
Trump has a history of dismissing government officials who disagree with his data and analysis. Earlier this month, after a poor jobs report, he fired the official responsible for the data. His administration also stopped publishing reports on climate change, canceled research on vaccine access, and removed data on gender identity from government websites.
The dismissal of the head of the DIA marked the peak of a week of broad changes and reorganization of military leadership in the Trump administration. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which coordinates 18 intelligence agencies including the DIA, announced cuts in personnel and budget.
The Pentagon announced this week that General David Allvin, the highest-ranking Air Force officer, plans to retire two years early.
Hegseth and Trump have been aggressively firing senior officers, often without formal explanations.
The government removed General CQ Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the highest-ranking Navy officer, the second-highest-ranking Air Force officer, and senior lawyers from three military branches.
In April this year, Hegseth dismissed General Tim Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency, and Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, a senior NATO official.
The Pentagon has not made any public explanation for these dismissals, although the government believes some officers supported diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1841195148478476/
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