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Despite triumphant proclamations from Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the surprise attack on Iran was a rousing success, there are concerns within the White House that blow-back is coming.

According to a report from Politico, not everyone in the administration was on board with the bombing of three sites in Iran linked to uranium enrichment.

Add to that, Trump made some broad statements about the damage done and now it falls to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to make it look like the president came out on top.

As Politico's Dasha Burns, Nahal Toosi and Jack Detsch reported on Sunday, "President Donald Trump was triumphant Saturday night during his Oval Office address but within the administration the mood was less sanguine as officials braced for a potential Iran counterattack."

According to one insider, “We don’t know how much this is going to get us into something protracted. Right now the message is we want to get rid of the nuclear capacity and focus on negotiations.”

Another person who took part in the White House debate offered that there are legitimate fears of a retaliatory "mass casualty event," and confessed, "There’s a lot of risks here for escalation,” before adding, "there’s going to be more pressure on the United States to get involved.”

As for Hegseth, the ball is now in his court

According to Politico, "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 'is going to feel pressure and somehow prove that the strikes are as successful as Trump claimed they are,”'the person added, saying that the Pentagon assessed this year that the U.S. military would need to do 30 days of sustained strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, owing to their underground depth and spread out layout."

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Immediately following a Sunday morning Pentagon press conference regarding the Saturday bombing attack on Iran ordered by Donald Trump, longtime New York Times Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper noted the wording used for one site by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.

Sitting on a panel on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Cooper was asked for her takeaways from comments made by Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Despite Donald Trump's claim after the attack that, "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated," Caine seemed to disagree.

Ac Cooper noted, "Some of my independent reporting now –– this is not coming from either Hegseth or Caine obviously –– but it's not, there's some indications now that people are not so sure that this site has been completely destroyed, that it was severely damaged."

She then added, "And Caine did say 'severely damaged,' but he did not use the word 'destroy,' and I think that's quite significant."

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Donald Trump's decision to launch an attack on Iran without approval from Congress was hammered by a Democratic senator on MSNBC early Sunday morning as he accused the president of a "double cross" perpetrated on U.S. voters.

Speaking with the hosts of "The Weekend," a fuming Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) harshly criticized the president for exceeding his authority which could put the country on the path to yet another war after making campaign promises to not go down that path.

Asked about a bill he is sponsoring that would deny funding for "any use of military force in or against Iran without specific congressional authorization," Welch replied, "Number one, this was Trump at his most impulsive. Number two, Trump lied to the American people and to his voters promising he would not get us in yet another Middle East war."

"Number three, his own intelligence came to the conclusion that while Iran was enriching uranium, it didn't have the capacity to deliver a weapon," he added. "Number four, [Israeli Prime Minister Bibi] Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiations and Trump willingly acceded to the Netanyahu agenda, which is also about regime change in Iran."

"So this is an astonishing double cross by Donald Trump to his supporters and to his pledge to Americans," he continued. "In my view the last thing we need is a war, another war in the Middle East and I'm one of the many in Congress that are going to be demanding that we vote on this."

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Appearing on MSNBC just hours after Donald Trump ordered a bombing attack on Iran, former CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos stated that amid all the uncertainty about how the attacked country will react is also lingering conflicts within the Trump administration over the move.

Speaking with the hosts of "The Weekend," Polymeropoulos suggested that it is common knowledge that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI head Tulsi Gabbard are not on the same page.

Picking up from an earlier conversation during the show, the retired CIA agent was asked about the "tension" in the White House.

"What role will that play in how the administration thinks about what to do next?" host Jonathan Capehart asked.

"So again, let's start, Jonathan, with the premise that the intelligence community is incredibly important right now," Polymeropoulos replied. "Again, it's the idea of assessing Iranian regime reaction, it's also the notion of, you know, working with our allies overseas to thwart, detect. >> disrupt and deter Iranian terrorist reprisals."

"But we also have the, I think, well-reported dispute between Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, his Director of National Intelligence that I think we haven't focused on and first of all, that's not ideal," he added. "Let's just keep that in mind. What we haven't focused on, though, is that John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, he is the one who made this analogy of the football field that the Iranians have run 99 yards down the field and just had not made that decision to move forward –– that seems to have resonated with Trump."

"But what that says to me is there's also tension between the CIA director and the DNI," he elaborated. "And you kind of put that together... that's not really what you want to see at a time of international crisis again, with the notion that the intelligence community is of absolutely paramount importance now."

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