Initial damage report says Iran’s nuclear programme has suffered a setback but is still viable

Satellite image by Maxar Technologies shows the Fordow underground nuclear facility in Iran after US strikes. Photo / Maxar Technologies

An initial United States intelligence report assesses that airstrikes ordered by President Donald Trump against Iran’s nuclear facilities set Tehran’s programme back by months but did not eliminate it, contradicting claims by Trump and his top aides about the mission’s success, according to two people familiar with the report.

The classified report by the Defence Intelligence Agency is based on the Pentagon’s early bomb damage assessment of the strikes on nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan using earth-penetrating munitions carried by B-2 bombers and Tomahawk missiles launched from submarines.

It assesses that the strikes failed to destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear programme and likely set it back by only a number of months, one of the people said.

The latest intelligence also indicates that Iran moved multiple batches of its highly enriched uranium out of the nuclear sites before the strikes occurred and that the uranium stockpiles were unaffected, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

A second person familiar with the initial DIA report who also spoke on the condition of anonymity said it concludes that some of Iran’s centrifuges, used to enrich uranium that could be used in a nuclear weapon, remain intact.

Trump has proclaimed repeatedly that the US bombing of Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities was an unmitigated success. “The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” he wrote in a social media post yesterday NZT.

CNN first reported on the DIA report earlier today.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on the report’s conclusions, while not denying 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,” Leavitt wrote on X.

“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 programme,” she wrote.

“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Non-proliferation experts and weapons analysts have long said that it would be almost impossible to eliminate Iran’s decades-old nuclear infrastructure by bombing alone.

Israel also targeted numerous parts of Iran’s nuclear programme in the strikes it began June 13, including Natanz and Isfahan.

While the Israelis said they killed up to a dozen senior nuclear scientists during their airstrikes, Iran has spent decades researching and producing nuclear materials and has a deep bench of experts.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has estimated that components of Tehran’s nuclear programme are spread across 30 sites, some acknowledged and subject to IAEA inspection and some not.

The day before Israel’s attacks started, Iran announced it was building another underground centrifuge and storage facility near Natanz, buried even deeper than the Fordow site.

An IAEA inspection scheduled for the next day was cancelled. That site is not known to have been struck by either Israel or the US.

The Trump Administration scheduled, and then postponed, Iran briefings for House members today.

Representative Mike Quigley (Democrat-Illinois), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Washington Post there is widespread belief in Congress that the embarrassing content of the assessment is the reason why the Trump Administration decided to delay the classified briefing. “They don’t delay briefings that have good news,” Quigley said.

Quigley declined to discuss the contents of a classified briefing he received earlier this week. But he said that for years he’s been told by US intelligence officials that any aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would not have a lasting impact.

“I’ve been briefed on the likelihoods of how this would play out for years, and I was always told you have to finish the job with troops on the ground,” he said. “Nothing has changed my mind on that.”