The president says there is a “decent chance of denuclearization” in North Korea and argues that the Islamic State “will soon be destroyed.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday pushed back against his intelligence chiefs’ national security assessments, saying “the Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran,” and he defended his own, more positive appraisals of threats to the United States posed by North Korea and the Islamic State.
“Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school,” Mr. Trump said.
In a series of Twitter posts the day after senior American intelligence officials briefed Congress and directly contradicted some of Mr. Trump’s rosier estimations, the president reasserted his own conclusions and trumpeted his accomplishments on critical national security matters. He said the Islamic State’s control in parts of Iraq and Syria “will soon be destroyed,” and that there was a “decent chance of Denuclearization” in North Korea.
On Tuesday, top intelligence officials described a different Iran, one that is not currently trying to make a nuclear bomb and appears to be complying with a 2015 agreement, even after Mr.
