WASHINGTON — An initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concludes that the U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites over the weekend were not as effective as President Donald Trump said and that they set the country's nuclear program back by only three to six months, according to three people with knowledge of the report.
“We were assuming that the damage was going to be much more significant than this assessment is finding,” said one of the three sources. “This assessment is already finding that these core pieces are still intact. That’s a bad sign for the overall program.”
CNN first reported the assessment’s conclusions.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the reporting on the intelligence assessment was inaccurate.
“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,” she 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.”
She added: “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
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A White House official said defense officials continue to “analyze the impact” of the bombing targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Trump declared Saturday that the Iranian nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated,” but the top U.S. military officer was less definitive Sunday in his view as a so-called battle damage assessment was completed.
“Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, said at the Pentagon.
Initial intelligence reporting does not indicate that all of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has been destroyed or accounted for, and there are still questions about Iran’s advanced centrifuges, which were not located at the nuclear sites bombed by U.S. aircraft, one of the sources said.
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Monday that “it will be a good, long time before we know, if we ever learn, whether we were able to actually destroy the stocks of 60% enriched uranium.”
Arms control experts say uranium can be transported relatively easily in canisters.
A senior White House official told NBC News that the early assessment “did not rise to the highest levels of leadership at the Department of Defense.” The person said defense officials continue to “analyze the impact” of the bombings.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also pushed back against the review in a statement, saying: “Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target—and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address to his nation Tuesday that Israel "destroyed the key facilities in Arak, Natanz and Isfahan" and "obliterated the underground enrichment site in Fordo.”
“We eliminated Iran’s entire nuclear archive," Netanyahu said. “We have dismantled the Iranian nuclear project. And if anyone in Iran thinks of rebuilding it — we will strike again.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said in a “Meet the Press NOW” interview Tuesday that it is “still very early to jump into conclusions” on the damage and that assessments are still forthcoming. He contended that Israel and the United States “were able to degrade their capabilities, push them back decades.”
The director general of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has said since the strike that craters were visible at the Fordo site but that no one, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, was in a position to fully assess underground damage at the facility. Grossi confirmed that Natanz and Isfahan were hit and that the entrances to tunnels used to store enriched material appeared to have been hit.
Since the strikes, Democratic lawmakers have been demanding information about the military action Trump authorized unilaterally and have expressed skepticism that it actually destroyed Iran’s nuclear components.
The classified U.S. assessment of the operation has been transmitted to Congress and viewed by some senators in a secure location, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
Several Senate Democrats confirmed they have seen it.
“I’m not going to, you know, comment on the veracity of something that was leaked,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., told NBC News on Tuesday, adding that battle damage assessment "is hard" and that "it’s also really challenging to destroy stuff underground.”
Asked by NBC News whether he had seen the assessment, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., responded: “I have seen some stuff.”
Congressional Democrats have been unhappy overall with how much information the administration has shared with Congress.
“Is it, in fact, the case that Iran’s nuclear program has been completely and totally obliterated?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., asked at a news conference Tuesday. “There apparently are reasons to believe that that was a blatant misrepresentation made by Donald Trump to the American people.”
