WASHINGTON: An early intelligence assessment of US strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities found they failed to destroy the program’s key components, and likely only set Tehran’s nuclear program back by a matter of months, according to a CNN report published Tuesday.
The assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon’s internal intelligence branch, is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the early Sunday morning strikes, CNN reported, citing one of four anonymous sources it says outlined the findings.
While the analysis remains ongoing, and could change as more data becomes available, it nonetheless clashes with Trump’s repeated public insistence that the strikes obliterated the facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
Two of the sources said that Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium were not destroyed while another said the centrifuges used to enrich remain significantly “intact.”
“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” one of the sources said.
The White House sharply rebuffed the analysis, but appeared to acknowledge its existence.
“This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,” she added.
Israel began its air campaign against Iran’s military and nuclear facilities on June 13, striking several of the same sites hit by the US on Sunday. The US struck the Fordo and Natanz facilities with 14 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs dropped from B-2 stealth bombers, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said Sunday.
Over two dozen submarine-launched cruise missiles targeted the Isfahan site, he added.
Trump has maintained that the sites “were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it.”
“It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR! ” Trump said on social media Tuesday.
