Flash News

Earthquake tremors felt again in Tirana

Accident on the Fier-Cekan axis, 3 injured

Murder of Martin Çeço/ Appeal overturns convictions for perpetrators, sends case back for retrial

Accident on "Durrës Road" in Tirana, 3 cars collide

Former head of the DP branch in Vlora elected head of the Cadastre

Bota

US intelligence: Attacks on Iran did not destroy nuclear plants

Politiko 2025-06-24 21:30:31

US military strikes on three of Iran's nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy key components of the country's nuclear program and likely delayed it only by months, according to a US intelligence assessment.

The estimate, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by U.S. Central Command after the U.S. strikes, one of the sources said.

Analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran's nuclear ambitions is ongoing and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings contradict President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the strikes "completely and completely destroyed" Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said Sunday that Iran's nuclear ambitions "are gone."

Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely "intact."

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US pushed them back maybe a few months, at most,” this person added.

The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said it disagreed with it.

White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “ This alleged assessment is completely false and was classified ‘top secret,’ yet was leaked to CNN by an anonymous low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leak of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to humiliate President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who carried out a perfectly executed mission to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

The US military said the operation went according to plan and was a "remarkable success".

It is still too early for the US to have a comprehensive picture of the impact of the attacks, and neither source described how the DIA assessment compares to the view of other agencies in the intelligence community. The US is continuing to gather information, including from inside Iran, as it assesses the damage.

Israel had been carrying out attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities for days before the US military operation, but claimed it needed the US 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs to finish the job. While US B-2 bombers dropped over a dozen bombs on two of the nuclear facilities, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant and the Natanz Enrichment Complex, the bombs did not completely eliminate the countries' centrifuges and highly enriched uranium, according to people familiar with the assessment.

Instead, the impact at all three sites - Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan - was largely limited to above-ground structures, which were severely damaged, the sources said. This includes the sites' energy infrastructure and some of the above-ground facilities used to convert uranium into metal for bomb production. CNN