CIA and intelligence officials are running a leak campaign against President Trump's Iran war — a conflict now dragging into its fifth month with no end in sight — after staying silent when the White House launched operations with promises of a swift, limited military excursion.
Two American troops have been killed by Iranian proxy forces in Jordan. One has been killed in Iraq. The latest wave of U.S. airstrikes against Iran has entered its eleventh consecutive night. While American service members take fire, the CIA is doing its best to distance itself from the war in Iran via the Washington Post and other liberal media outfits.
This is the deep state working exactly as it was built to work. Anonymous leaks. Planted assessments. Carefully chosen press contacts. Timed to arrive while a president is most politically vulnerable and least able to fight back.
The Washington Post published what it described as an internal CIA assessment concluding that "Iran's government is unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position" and that Tehran and Washington are "stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war." Jonathan Panikoff, a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East now at the Atlantic Council, told the Post the administration's approach "is almost certainly incorrect." Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist with no operational role and no consequences for being wrong, declared that "there's absolutely no doubt President Trump underestimated Iran."
Consider why these men are saying this now. Not at the beginning of the campaign, when their concerns might have shaped the decision. Not through official channels that would require them to stand behind their analysis publicly. Now. Anonymously. Through a newspaper. Five months in, with the conflict past its promised timeline and political pressure building.
The CIA and its network of think tanks and former officials are building a record — a paper trail establishing that they warned the White House, that they knew this wouldn't work, that whatever happens next isn't on them. If Trump's Iran strategy ultimately fails, they'll have Washington Post clips to prove they said so. If it succeeds, this story disappears. Either way, they're covered. The only people not covered are the ones actually fighting.
The intelligence community's track record does not support the authority it is claiming here. These are the institutions that sold America on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That told policymakers the Afghan government was stable right up until the Taliban walked into Kabul in days and Americans scrambled for the last planes out. After all of that, the CIA wants the public to trust its anonymous assessment that Trump got Iran wrong.
There is also the matter of what these leaks actually do to an ongoing operation. When the CIA plants negative assessments in major newspapers while troops are in the field, it doesn't just pressure the president politically — it signals to Iran that the American government is fractured, that public support is eroding, that holding out a little longer might be worth it. Every anonymous quote in the Washington Post is a message to Tehran: wait us out.
Two American troops dead in Jordan. One dead in Iraq. Eleven straight nights of airstrikes. American families waiting to hear if their sons and daughters are coming home. The CIA's priority this week was making sure the Washington Post had the right story.