Pentagon Undercuts White House's Iran Preemptive Strike Claim: Report

The Pentagon acknowledged to congressional staff Sunday that in the Middle East unless Israel attacked first — directly contradicting the White House's assertion a day earlier that Tehran posed an imminent, preemptive threat to American personnel in the region, according to multiple people who attended the briefing.

Senior administration officials had told reporters Saturday that the U.S. chose to attack Iran after receiving indications the regime was planning to launch missile attacks against U.S. bases and create a mass casualty situation. CNN, which first reported the contradiction, said sources indicated there was no intelligence to support that claim.

Pentagon briefers pointed to Iran's ballistic missile program and proxy forces as evidence of a broader threat to U.S. forces, but sources who attended the briefing noted that posture has existed for years and did not support the administration's argument that a preemptive American strike was necessary. When pressed on the discrepancy, White House spokesperson Dylan Johnson said the Pentagon had "briefed the bipartisan staffs of several national security committees in both chambers for over 90 minutes on the military action in Iran."

The briefers also outlined the U.S. military's current strategy, noting that operations over the past two days have focused primarily on destroying Iranian air defenses and command and control infrastructure, with plans to shift toward more aggressively targeting Iranian ballistic missile launch sites in the coming days.

The U.S. has been depleting long-range precision-guided munitions at a significant rate and is expected to continue doing so until both the U.S. and Israel are confident, they have achieved air superiority over Iran.

This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.