Once upon a time in a land not far away there was the ruler of a big country who demanded everyone agree with him all the time. Over the ages the clever leadership of previous emperors had made that big country very mighty with all sorts of toys that could hurt everybody else.
This ruler was unlike all the previous rulers, and if anyone disagreed with him he would have a temper tantrum, and everyone was afraid he would then throw his toys out of the cot.
So, his courtiers knew that to stay in favour they should always agree with him, and over the years anyone with character and wisdom had been got rid of or decided not to play. Outside the empire, other countries were so afraid of a tantrum they also flattered him, so as not to have him throw out his toys.
One day, when he had used some of his toys, he said how perfectly they had worked and demanded everyone agree with him…
…Enough.
I am of course referring to Trump’s comments on the recent US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites and you get the idea I’m sure. The common phrase, ‘the king has no clothes’ and its variations, comes from the Hans Christian Anderson morality tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ from the final instalment of his ‘Fairy Tales Told for Children.’
In that particular tale http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html a very vain emperor obsessed with his clothes is fooled by some conmen into believing they can weave him a wonderful set of robes – clothes that are invisible to anyone unfit for office or really stupid.
To cut a short story even shorter, his courtiers say nothing, and he ends up naked in a public procession, with no-one saying anything, until, “But he has nothing on at all,” said a little child at last. In the tale, word spreads, “But he has nothing on at all,” cried at last the whole people.
So here we all are – all living for real in a child’s fairy tale.
And this matters. So, rather than another broad brush assault on Trump, let me break down this specific instance and see Andersen-style the morals it draws.
Leave aside agreeing or not with the fact of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, the information we could quickly and reasonably rely on is that they hit their targets. Immediate post-strike imagery and analysis showed a large amount of surface destruction. That’s it.
However, Trump, immediately went further, saying the sites, "have been completely and totally obliterated." This is typical Trump of course, everything is the best, worse, biggest etc, etc as he maintains his continuous effort to obliterate the outer limits of hyperbole.
But let’s be clear – he could not know this. Target hit is not necessarily target destroyed, especially when it’s buried deep within a mountain, as in the case of Fordo. The same day we saw the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, being far more cautious, "Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction."
So far, so typical.
But fairly quickly reality came calling, with the leak to CNN and the New York Times reporting that early assessments indicated it may have set back the Iranian nuclear programme only months. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/24/us/politics/iran-nuclear-sites.html
Cue outrage from Trump, echoed by his acolytes and sycophants. In Andersen’s tale the child’s cry is picked up by the crowd – in real life Trump labelled those who called out his claim as ‘scum’. He followed this up with typically aggressive and bullying engagements with the media, seeking to browbeat them into submission.
In a way his response was even worse than that of Andersen’s emperor, for whom the crowd’s reaction, “made a deep impression upon the emperor, for it seemed to him that they were right; but he thought to himself, “Now I must bear up to the end.”
No such thought for Trump, who doubled/trebled/quadrupled down deeper than Fordo mountain in his assertion that Iran’s nuclear programme had been ‘obliterated’.
Roaring in behind was his leading sycophant, Hegseth, looking ever more like a wannabe mafioso, ranting at the media, and absurdly accusing them of demeaning the aircrew on the strike.
It’s worth noting his argument that the leaked report could be dismissed because it was an early assessment classed as ‘low confidence’ in part as the evidence was buried deep in a mountain. How can he dismiss that report because the evidence is buried inside the mountain and then go on to have high confidence it's been obliterated when, ahem, the evidence is buried under the mountain?
The answer of course is that logic is irrelevant. He says it is, because Trump says it is. His master’s voice – in mafia terms, the Don has spoken.
What’s the reality? Mostly likely, the US still doesn’t know, and with good reason. In the intelligence world there are quite elaborate categories for assessing intel as they often call it. It varies from country to country, but commonly it has low, medium, and high confidence categories with clear criteria for each, going far beyond looking at post-strike imagery.
So straight after a complex attack like the US strike then an intel assessment would almost inevitably be low confidence, not to imply failure, but because the assessment process is just starting. When Trump said it had been obliterated he simply couldn’t know, and he was foolish to say so.
Equally the leaked report is not and was highly unlikely to be definitive – hence it categorising itself as ‘low confidence’, which in non-intel parlance means, too early to be sure.
Does this matter beyond the security community? Absolutely.
Firstly, its success or otherwise has huge political implications. Setting back Iran’s nuclear ambitions by months or years makes a huge difference to handling Iran and the potential for either some kind of deal or maybe further strikes. What we can say is that there are unanswered questions about the whereabouts of Iran’s enriched Uranium and other unhit facilities.
Secondly, there’s the credibility issue. Anyone sentient already knows you can’t rely on anything Trump says, but the toxic effect is infecting the whole US system of governance.
So, since Trump said the Iranian nukes had been ‘obliterated’ everyone is falling into line. Even before then, any discussion of the imminence of the threat – how close Iran was to nuclear weapons – had been compromised. Tulsi Gabbard, the distinctly odd, Putin-loving, conspiracy-loving, know-nothing who is, God help us, Director of National Intelligence had said the intelligence service didn’t believe Iran was close to a nuke. Not only couldn’t she be trusted to really represent the views of the intelligence community, but once Trump decided to lean towards bombing Iran he bluntly said she was ‘wrong’. Obediently she then reversed her view, but still ended up sidelined.
More recently therefore, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director has, big surprise, come out and said ‘new intelligence’ suggested the programme had been set back for years. But how can we believe him, any more than Hegseth? Of course we cannot.
So, if the dedicated professionals who are doing the assessment conclude Iran’s nuclear programme is still a goer, will we be told or, more likely, how will it be ‘managed’?
To be clear, it is possible Iran’s programme has been really badly hit. Frankly, I really would rather Trump was right on this one. Only Iran wants Iran to have nukes. But the bottom line is we can’t trust the Administration to be honest on this – if they would hide the bombing not fully succeeding, then why would we take them at their word if they say it did? You can see this playing out now as the professionals twist and turn to try to play it straight and maintain their credibility without openly contradicting Trump’s hyperbole.
And credibility is so fundamental on a wider level beyond this issue. Ironically, given his abuse of facts and reality, Trump has got where he’s got in part because of massive distrust of the system, and the establishment’s loss of credibility.
As former British minister Michael Gove famously said during Britain’s Brexit campaign, ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts…’ To be fair to him his comment was a little more caveated than it was taken, but the point remains. Growing vaccine resistance, the over-reliance on so-called influencers, the general disillusionment with incumbent governments.
This is the polarisation that is toxifying our politics where so many only trust those who reinforce what they already think. Part of that collateral damage is the loss of nuance – in a world mostly composed of greys we impose black and white. Iran’s programme is either obliterated or just delayed a few months.
We have a critical trust deficit, and here is just another example, including of Trump trying to close down, as a matter of policy, anyone daring to challenge his version of events.
Back in 2018, Lesley Stahl, the 13-time Emmy award-winning “60 Minutes” correspondent, related a conversation she had with Trump after his November 2016 election victory, when she asked him why he kept attacking the media. Stahl recalled, “He said you know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”
That’s why he calls the media who reported the Pentagon leak ‘scum’. That’s why Hegseth, the former Fox News ranter, is so angrily bullying in his latest rants. That’s why professional media are unfairly accused of demeaning the aircrew on the Iran strike for daring to report doubts about the effect of the bombing.
Through my previous career I have been involved in the area of targeting and assessments, and I can tell you professional aircrew don’t give a stuff about being supposedly demeaned – they do care very much about knowing the outcome of their efforts, good or bad.
No, Trump’s rage at the media was not about the aircrew being demeaned but him feeling demeaned when his foolishly premature remarks met reality. It’s all of a piece with his campaign to undermine the media as a threat to his efforts to dictate reality – a policy pursued with enthusiasm by his acolytes.
In an update of Anderson’s fairy tale, anyone saying the emperor has no clothes would likely have someone like the White House’s communications director Stephen Cheung say of them, as he recently has of one journalist, “He’s a lying sack of shit…he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.” Classy stuff and somewhat typical White House media handling.
But the effect of feeling obliged to admire the emperor’s non-clothes has spread widely.
In the same week of the Iran strikes we had the NATO summit, totally orientated around keeping Emperor Trump from throwing a tantrum and perhaps sinking the Alliance. Rather like Andersen’s emperor and his obsession with clothes rather than running the empire, none of Trump’s antagonism to NATO is anything to do with some considered policy but a function of his narcissistic personality and instinctive prejudices.
Be that as it may, NATO’s bosses did what they thought they had to do. So, the Summit was drastically shortened to match Trump’s attention span. The communique was also shortened and there was no reference to Russia’s continuing aggression against Ukraine. Meanwhile, all the heads of state delivered lashings of flattery, allowing Trump to adopt his triumphant Mussolini pose in the group photo. Trump left saying nice things about Alliance leaders, so job done – for today at least.
And then there’s Mark Rutte. He’s NATO’s Secretary General, so I guess he took a big one for the team, with his supposedly private note to Trump praising him to the skies, that Trump then so predictably released. But the reference to Trump as ‘daddy’, coming in a joint media appearance, was at another level. I am ex-NATO and remain NATO to my fingertips, but come on.
Most of all they ‘fixed’ the communique to deliver Trump his demanded 5% GDP rise – sort of. 3.5% is for real defence spending, which is tough enough. The other 1.5% is ill-defined to put it at its most kind. It is – let’s face it – a bit ‘emperor’s new clothes.’
In the fairy tale, after the child’s cry is taken up by the crowd, Andersen concludes his tale, saying, ‘And the chamberlains walked with still greater dignity, as if they carried the train which did not exist.’
And so it goes on. It’s a bit alarming that a child’s fairy tale should be so apposite to our current state. And what about us? When it comes to our defence promises, and not just NATO, maybe we’re not naked but perhaps we are down to our underwear?
Excellent… once again!