A U.S. intelligence report suggests that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months after U.S. strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated” as President Donald Trump has said, according to two people familiar with the early assessment. The report issued by the Defense Intelligence Agency on Monday contradicts statements from Trump about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the people, the report found that while the Sunday strikes at the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites did significant damage, the facilities were not totally destroyed. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The assessment also suggests that at least some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium, necessary for creating a nuclear weapon, was moved out of multiple sites before the U.S. strikes and survived, and it found that Iran’s centrifuges, which are required to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, are largely intact, according to the people. At the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant, where U.S. B-2 stealth bombers dropped several 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, the entrance collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, but the underground infrastructure was not destroyed, the assessment found. The people said that intelligence officials had warned of such an outcome in previous assessments ahead of the strike on Fordo. The White House strongly pushed back on the DIA assessment, calling it “flat-out wrong.” “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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.” The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the DIA assessment. ODNI coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the DIA, which is the intelligence arm of the Defense Department, responsible for producing intelligence on foreign militaries and the capabilities of adversaries. The Israeli government also has not released any official assessments of the U.S. strikes. IDF spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Wednesday that it’s too early to determine the results of the strikes on the nuclear sites, but “the assessment is that we significantly harmed the program, setting it back by years.” Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff, who said he has read damage assessment reports from U.S. intelligence and other nations, reiterated Tuesday night that the strikes had deprived Iran of the ability to develop a weapon and called it outrageous that the U.S. assessment was shared with reporters. “It’s treasonous so it ought to be investigated,” Witkoff said on Fox News Channel. The intelligence assessment was first reported by CNN on Tuesday. Outside experts had suspected Iran had likely already hidden the core components of its nuclear program as it stared down the possibility that American bunker-buster bombs could be used on its nuclear sites. Bulldozers and trucks visible in satellite imagery taken just days before the strikes have fueled speculation among experts that Iran may have transferred its half-ton stockpile of enriched uranium to an unknown location. And the incomplete destruction of the nuclear sites could still leave the country with the capacity to spin up weapons-grade […]
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Jun
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