Donald Trump is a master of shaping the political narrative, but his focus on messaging is one reason for his poor relationship with the United States’ intelligence community. Recent disputes over Iran show how the latter can be a problem for Trump – as a source of evidence that can undermine his message. In order to preserve his narratives on Iran, the president risks politicising the American intelligence community, which can undermine national security.

At midnight on Saturday 21 June, US forces launched Operation Midnight Hammer. B-2 stealth bombers took off from Missouri and flew 19 hours to Iran, where they bombed facilities related to that country’s nuclear programme. By 10pm, Trump claimed the US military had ‘totally obliterated’ the nuclear sites.

The attacks seemed a clear political victory: Trump had joined Israel in strikes that apparently ended the Iranian nuclear programme. But the president’s winning narrative was questioned immediately – in part by American intelligence and intelligence chiefs.

First, Trump was confronted on the justification for the attack – on whether Iran was building a nuclear weapon. The president dismissed the assessments of the US intelligence community and seemed to pressure his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to change her views.

Then Trump had to defend the results. A leaked report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimated that, rather than being ‘obliterated’, US attacks had only set Iran’s programme back by a few months. The White House reacted furiously to the contradiction, calling the early ‘low confidence’ assessment ‘fake news’, threatening to subpoena reporters for their sources, while Trump threatened to sue the New York Times and CNN.

The episode has shown that, for Trump, the message is what matters. The president is a master of shaping narratives. It’s been a secret of his success. He has turned damaging situations, such as Russian electoral interference, into the ‘Russia Hoax’ and uses strategic communications in trade negotiations with partners like Canada. But secret intelligence is not designed to fit a narrative. Providing accurate assessments that may go against desired policies is key to a functioning intelligence service – something essential for national security.

The president’s willingness to politicise intelligence on Iran speaks to the way he prioritises his public narrative over the effectiveness of the intelligence services. Politicisation does more than obscure an important crisis – it weakens the intelligence services in ways that undermine their core function: providing decision-makers with the best information possible.

Politicisation is something that all effective intelligence services must strive to resist. It can happen in different ways and have complex effects, but it can be understood as ‘the manipulation of intelligence estimates to reflect policy preferences’. And it can have devastating effects. The politicisation of intelligence over the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, is a particularly destructive example.

We’ve seen a trend toward politicisation from the Trump administration already. Senior professionals have been asked about their political preferences before being appointed to what are supposed to be apolitical national security positions. Gabbard fired the top officials on a leading analytical body, the National Intelligence Council, and evidence suggests it was because they refused to alter an assessment which contradicted statements made by the president. Trump fired a number of senior national security officials, including the director and deputy director of the National Security Agency, after meeting with the far-right activist Laura Loomer.

As disturbing as the trend has been, Trump’s handling of Iran was of a different order. Despite public intelligence assessments to the contrary, the president has cleared any obstacle to a narrative that says the attack was justified and a total success.

Trump dismissed Gabbard’s claim, based on intelligence community assessments, that Iran was not building a weapon, and brought her onto the messaging line. Gabbard then completely revised her assessment after public rebukes from the president, saying Iran was ‘within weeks’ of having a bomb.

The indignant rejection of the DIA report points to the president’s desire to dismiss views out of step with his narrative. It also speaks to deeper problems around assessment and distribution. Initiatives to limit intelligence-sharing with congress, subpoena reporters or slash the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – so far as it may be a result of the Trump-Gabbard clash – point to the way that politicisation for the sake of perception can sprawl.

Politicising intelligence services undermines these services in important ways. Perhaps most of all it discourages intelligence officials from providing leaders with the unvarnished truth. Speaking recently to the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, I argued that one of the key roles of intelligence services is to speak truth to power, but leaders must be willing to consider uncomfortable, unpleasant or inconvenient narratives. Academic and former CIA analyst David Gioe, and former Director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden, argue that Trump’s politicisation might lead to a situation where officials will bend assessments to support Trump’s position. One former senior American intelligence official, speaking to me, highlighted how intelligence leaders have seemed to submit to partisan pressure and alter assessments based on intelligence.

Politicisation has other risks that can weaken the intelligence community. It can damage intelligence relations or liaisons with foreign services. Allied services intelligence is, in part, based on a sense of trust. If foreign services sense that politics are infecting their counterparts abroad they may limit what they share for fear that their sources and methods may be compromised. Human intelligence services, like the Central Intelligence Agency, rely on human informants or agents to provide information. If they suspect that agencies support political narratives rather than a reality-based foreign policy, potential agents may reconsider their recruitment.

Politicisation can affect the public perception of intelligence services. In the UK, trust in intelligence remains low after flawed intelligence material was used to support the invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump has supported conspiracy theories of a ‘deep state’ within government decision-making circles, and appointed believers to root out the members of this cabal. Although there is little evidence of any plots, experts fear the lasting impact of these theories on public trust.

Put together, these issues can have a cascading impact that is greater than the sum of their parts. Allied relationships, international reputation, agent recruitment, and public perception all play important roles in the way intelligence services contribute to larger national security systems. The damage of politicisation can extend beyond the services themselves to the departments and the decision-makers they are built to support.

Donald Trump is not the first politician to understand the importance of communications, but his actions over Iran highlight the emphasis placed by his administration on messaging over management, on perception over reality. Public events show that such priorities can clash dangerously with US intelligence.

Intelligence services are complex organisations that do difficult work to protect national security. Perhaps most of all, they provide the best information possible to decision-makers. The president is free to ignore intelligence – but must be aware of the risks posed by politicising those services that provide it.