WASHINGTON>> President Donald Trump’s fights with the intelligence community were a running theme of his first term as he raged against an investigation into his campaign’s alleged links to Russia. Now, a sequel is playing out as Trump battles to shape the public’s understanding of his foreign policy gamble in Iran.

An early U.S. intelligence assessment said Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after American strikes on three sites last weekend. The Republican president has rejected the report and pronounced the program “completely and fully obliterated.”

The dispute is unlikely to fade anytime soon. Top administration officials are pressing Trump’s case, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth scolding the media at a Pentagon briefing Thursday for “breathlessly” focusing on an intelligence report he downplayed as preliminary.

“Intelligence people strive to live in a world as it is, describe the world as it is, where politicians are all about describing the world as they want it to be,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a 32-year intelligence veteran who held positions including CIA chief of staff and senior director of the White House Situation Room.

Although it’s hardly unheard of for presidents to bristle at what they perceive as bad news from the intelligence community, it’s rare for the conflict to spill into public view as it did this week.

Trump tapped loyalists to lead America’s intelligence services in his second term — Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence and John Ratcliffe as CIA director. They promised to end what they said was the weaponization of intelligence and root out disloyal officers.

But there have been conflicts.

Last month, the National Intelligence Council declassified a memo in response to an open records request that said American spy agencies found no coordination between the Venezuelan government and the Tren de Aragua gang, contradicting statements the Trump administration used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan immigrants.

Gabbard later fired the two veteran intelligence officers who led the council because of their perceived opposition to Trump.

More trouble came after the war between Israel and Iran began nearly two weeks ago.

Trump dismissed Gabbard’s testimony to Congress in March that U.S. spy agencies did not believe Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Trump insisted Iran was very close.

“I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters last week.

Gabbard later accused the news media of mischaracterizing her testimony, noting that she had mentioned Iran’s large stockpile of enriched uranium that goes beyond levels needed for civilian uses.

Iran maintains that its nuclear program was peaceful, although the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly has warned that Tehran has enough highly enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs if it chooses.

A preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency that emerged this week said that although the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed and the program was set back only by a few months.

The White House called the assessment “flat-out wrong.” The DIA said the initial findings will be refined as new information becomes available.

Given Trump’s skeptical view of intelligence officials, Pfeiffer said, “his initial instinct is to assume that if the intelligence community is telling him something different than he would like it to be, that it’s because they’re trying to undermine him.”