By MICHELLE L. PRICE and MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new U.S. intelligence report found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after a U.S. strike, and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment.

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The early intelligence report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

According to the people, the report found that while the Saturday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, they were not totally destroyed.

This satellite picture by Planet Labs PBC shows Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment site at Fordo on March 19, 2025. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

The White House strongly pushed back on the assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.”

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries.

The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday.

Barring a trade, Friday night’s first round of the 2025 NHL Draft looks to be a quiet one for Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin and his front office team.

The Wild traded away their first-round pick when they acquired defense prospect David Jiricek from Columbus last November, meaning the Blue Jackets now own the 20th overall pick once owned by Minnesota.

With the Wild franchise celebrating 25 years, this will be their 26th go-round in the draft, which has usually been held at one site — Xcel Energy Center was the host in 2011 — with all 32 teams sending their brain trust to one arena to focus on their future. The league is trying a new “decentralized” approach in 2025, with the top three dozen or so picks expected to be at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles so they can hold up their new employer’s sweater when their name is called.

The key personnel from each NHL team will be at their home base making their selections remotely, as opposed to sitting at tables next to the front offices of other teams. Guerin and his crew will be conducting the draft from their TRIA Rink offices in downtown St. Paul on Friday and Saturday.

“When you’re at the draft table, you’re talking in code, you don’t want to use names,” said Judd Brackett, the Wild’s director of amateur scouting. “In this scenario, it makes it easier — but there are things that are advantageous about being in person, too. But it’s going to be great to get our group together this week, and we’re excited.”

With 25 Wild drafts in the past and another looming, here is a look at some draft facts as they relate to the Wild.

When is the draft, and how can I watch?

Round 1 begins at 6 p.m. CDT Friday, with ESPN televising the first 32 picks. Rounds 2-7 will take place Saturday starting at 11 a.m. CDT, and can be seen on NHL Network.

Which names will we hear called first on Friday?

NHL general managers are practiced in the art of deception, and trades, both up and down, are certainly in play. But as it stands, the first three selections belong to the New York Islanders, San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks, in that order. The top three prospects, according to NHL Central Scouting and most experts who have made a mock draft, are major junior defenseman Matthew Schaefer, major junior forward Michael Misa, and Boston College forward James Hagens.

If you’re waiting to hear a Minnesota name, expect Woodbury/Hill-Murray defenseman Logan Hensler, who had a top-notch freshman season at Wisconsin, to go sometime in the top 20. Overall, Brackett said this year’s draft is considered “forward heavy.”

When will the Wild pick?

This could be a light weekend for Minnesota, which heads into the draft owning just four selections. The Wild are first on the clock in the second round, 52nd overall, on Saturday. They also select 121st overall in Round 4, 141st (Round 5) and 180th (Round 6). While there are always a few late-round gems out there, the reality is that the names called by the Wild on Saturday will more than likely start their pro careers in Iowa, and have much to prove before cracking an NHL lineup.

Of the 24 players on the Wild’s NHL roster last season, just three — Vinnie Hinostroza, Jared Spurgeon and Jake Middleton — were picked after Round 5, while Justin Brazeau, Freddie Gaudreau and Mats Zuccarello were undrafted. Fourteen were picked in the first or second rounds.

Where did all of the Wild’s 2025 picks go?

Several players currently on the Wild roster or in their system are there because Guerin used 2025 draft picks to get them here.

Jiricek cost them the 2025 first round pick and a few players. Their third-round pick went to Philadelphia in order to move up one spot in the 2024 draft so they could select defenseman Zeev Buium 12th overall.

The fourth-round pick in this draft went to Anaheim in 2023 in the deal that brought defenseman John Klingberg to Minnesota for 21 games. Similarly, a 2022 trade with the Rangers brought tough guy Ryan Reaves to the Wild for 67 games in exchange for their fifth-round 2025 pick. And defenseman Zach Bogosian is a member of the Wild because Guerin sent the seventh-round pick to Tampa Bay in 2023.

Barring more draft weekend moves, the Wild will use a fourth-round pick they got from Toronto in 2023 in exchange for Ryan O’Reilly and Josh Pilar, and a fifth-round selection they got from Columbus as part of the Jiricek deal.

Worst pick in Wild history?

The Wild’s first general manager, Doug Risebrough, did some great things in building the franchise. But after drafting Marian Gaborik in 2000, his run of first-round picks in the was notable for many of the wrong reasons. In 2005, he used the fourth overall pick on Benoit Pouliot, who played fewer than 75 games for Minnesota. Among those picked later in the 2005 first round were future NHL All Stars Carey Price, Tukka Rask, Anze Kopitar, Mark Staal and T.J. Oshie.

Risebrough and his front office team used their next three first-round picks on James Sheppard, Colton Gillies and Tyler Cuma.

But perhaps the biggest Wild draft disappointment came in 2004. If there was one criticism from provincial Minnesota hockey fans in the early days of this franchise, it was the lack of home-grown talent in the system. Risebrough sought to change that, using the 12th pick to grab Savage, Minn., native A.J. Thelen, a big defenseman who had cut his teeth at Shattuck-St. Mary’s and was coming off a monster freshman season at Michigan State. Less than a year after his name was called by the Wild, Thelen had been removed from the Spartans roster after a zero-goal season. He played one game for the Wild’s AHL affiliate in Houston.

Best pick in Wild history?

Some notable names have been grabbed by the Wild in the first round, beginning in 2000 when their first-ever draft pick, third overall, became the team’s first star in Gaborik. But it will be hard for this franchise, or any franchise, to top the value they found in 2015 when former Minnesota general manager Chuck Fletcher used a fifth-round pick, 135th overall, to select a small town Russian kid named Kirill Kaprizov.

Worst draft-day trade in Wild history?

It looked like little more than a swap of later-round draft picks on draft day in 2014 when Tampa Bay wanted to move up one spot in the third round. Minnesota got third- and seventh-round picks from the Lightning, which Fletcher used to select collegian: Louie Belpedio and former Gophers defenseman Jack Sadek, who played a combined total of four games for the Wild. With the pick acquired from Minnesota, the Lightning grabbed Brayden Point, who has scored more than 300 goals in the NHL over the past nine seasons, and was Tampa Bay’s leading goal scorer on 2020 and 2021 Stanley Cup champion teams.

Best draft-day trade in Wild history?

The recently-retired Cal Clutterbuck was a fan favorite in Minnesota, beloved for his hard-nosed “hit anything that moves” style and his old-time hockey attitude on the ice. So, some heads turned on draft day in 2013, when the Wild sent a third-round pick and Clutterbuck to the Islanders in exchange for Swiss forward Nino Niederreiter. In his first five seasons with the Wild, before he was traded to Carolina in 2019, Niederreiter was a well-liked forward who averaged better than 20 goals a season.

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The new Palace Pub may look a lot like Wrestaurant at the Palace, the restaurant that preceded it: Very long wood bar, classy teal walls, festive entryway mural, outdoor patio space and walk-up pizza window.

But don’t be fooled: They’re different! The pizza is thin-crust now!

Jokes aside, the Palace Pub is pitching itself as a bar — a distinct vibe, if subtly so, from its predecessor.

“Before, we’d said ‘restaurant,’ and now it’s a bar,” said Marc Dickhut, the director of general operations for First Avenue, which owns the restaurant and co-manages the adjacent Palace Theatre. “You can still have great food and great service and be a bar. There are plenty of amazing restaurants in this area. We just want to be a good bar, with good food.”

Wrestaurant, which opened in fall 2023, was a partnership between First Avenue and local Detroit-style shop Wrecktangle Pizza, but the Palace Pub is fully an in-house project, Dickhut said. Wrestaurant quietly closed last fall amid extensive water damage to its building, bought in early 2023 by now-troubled Madison Equities. The spot had previously been home to Wild Tymes.

Now as the Palace Pub, the menu is completely redone: More casual and tavern-y, with similarities to the menu at The Depot, First Avenue’s restaurant next to its downtown Minneapolis flagship. The staff is new. And because of the water damage, some of the furniture, fixtures and plumbing are new, too.

It’s certainly a place to eat before Palace shows or other concerts or events downtown, but Dickhut and his team also hope you’ll visit even when your next stop isn’t next door, he said. Arcade games and pinball have been added, and the place is open regularly 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, regardless of various nearby venues’ event schedules.

The Palace Pub opened a little early on its first day for a sneak peek, and I stopped by to check it out. As for drinks, they’ve got 12 beer taps, plus cans, wine, non-alcoholic options and cocktails that, at least in the case of my TC Side Car, were appropriately strong.

And speaking of that thin-crust pizza, it’s good.

I sprung for a classic cheese. Whole pizzas are cut into squares, but slices are also available. The point is not to be a push-the-envelope pizza, though I did appreciate that the sauce was especially zesty; it’s to be one you’d happily split with friends over some drinks, which it was.

Same goes for the Buffalo wings, served as separate drumettes and flats instead of whole as previously: They’re Buffalo wings that taste like Buffalo wings. And you know what? That hits the spot.

Palace Pub: Open 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tuesdays–Saturdays at 33 W. Seventh Place; 952-600-5611; palacepubstpaul.com

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If the Pentagon had used bunker buster bombs and cruise missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapon facilities last year, a necessary act as the fanatical mullah regime in Tehran will never voluntarily give up on nukes, the congressional Republicans would be calling President Joe Biden’s action unconstitutional and saying that he was starting a war, while Democrats would be praising the president for ending a threat to the whole world.

What’s changed is that a Republican president ordered the strikes, so the Democrats are crying foul, while GOP leaders on the Hill are lining up behind President Donald Trump.

Democrats and Republicans agree that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. If the ayatollah would not abandon his nukes program through diplomacy, and after years and years of talks and deceptions and delays, he wouldn’t, then it would have to be ended by other means, including being bombed to bits. It shouldn’t matter which political party the president is.

Such partisanship is not about the consensus foreign policy, stopping Iran from having the bomb, but about who is in the White House. And that’s a bad prescription, especially since for decades, every president, of both parties, has been trying to deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, home to chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” seeking to acquire atomic weapons.

It was former President Barack Obama who showed the world that Iran was building a secret underground uranium enrichment factory at Fordo in 2009. It was also Obama who authorized the creation of a bomb big enough to destroy Fordo, buried inside of a mountain, the GBU-57A/B MOP. That stands for Guided Bomb Unit and Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000 pound, 20-foot long giant.

A squad of seven B-2 bombers flew the 37 hours roundtrip from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to Iran to drop their payloads of two bombs each. That equals 14 of these things, which is 420,000 pounds of bomb, landing on Fordo and Natanz, another nuke site.

Meanwhile, a U.S. sub offshore of Iran launched 30 Tomahawk missiles at Isfahan, the third nuke target hit in Operation Midnight Hammer in the dead of night in Iran over the weekend.

A week ago, as Israel was attacking Iran’s nukes and ballistic missile infrastructure (along with its military leaderships and atomic scientists and air defenses) the G-7, which consists of the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan, issued a joint statement that said “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” and “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” Let’s highlight that: “Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump gave Iran chance after chance, even as Israel struck. But Iran would not cease its pursuit of nukes.

Iran has threatened retaliation, but they are very weak, their proxies of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, either destroyed or degraded to impotency. Iran’s puppet state of Syria is no more and the militias in Iraq are far less a danger. Half their missile launchers are gone and Israel controls the skies over the country.

Give up the nukes for good and all the fighting ends, which is something everyone in Washington can agree on.

— The New York Daily News