WASHINGTON>> Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of U.S. damage to Iranian nuclear sites angered President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Hegseth also fired Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, who is chief of the Navy Reserve, as well as Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversees Naval Special Warfare Command, another U.S. official said.

The reasons for their firingswere not clear Friday.

The Trump administration increasingly has moved against the military leadership and the intelligence community.

Some current and former national security officials saw their security clearances revoked this week in a tactic that the administration has used against perceived foes.

Critics say the administration’s actions could chill dissent and send a signal that the intelligence community should be careful in reaching conclusions at odds with Trump’s interests.

Kruse’s firing comes a few months after details of a preliminary assessment of U.S. airstrikes against Iran leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months, contradicting assertions from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Republican president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated,” rejected the report. His oft-repeated criticism of the DIA analysis built on his long-running distrust of intelligence assessments, including one published in 2017 that said Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which is responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency — has been declassifying years-old documents meant to cast doubt on those previous findings.

Following the June strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, Hegseth lambasted the press for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.

While the Pentagon has offered no details on the firings, Democrats in Congress have raised alarm over the precedent Kruse’s ouster sets for the intelligence community.

“The firing of yet another senior national security official underscores the Trump administration’s dangerous habit of treating intelligence as a loyalty test rather than a safeguard for our country,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.