Trump’s Iran Strike Claims Under Fire: Leaked Report Questions “Total Obliteration” of Nuclear Sites

The Trump administration is scrambling to spin a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report that pours cold water on President Donald Trump’s bold claim that U.S. airstrikes “completely and totally obliterated” three Iranian nuclear facilities, like never before in the history of airstrikes. The report, splashed across CNN and The New York Times, suggests the strikes, part of Operation Midnight Hammer, only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, not the knockout blow Trump touted.

In a national address right after the strikes, Trump didn’t hold back, [does he ever?] declaring the sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan “completely and totally obliterated.” He doubled down Saturday, calling the operation “very successful” and insisting Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities were toast. But the DIA’s assessment, based on a U.S. Central Command battle damage report, says otherwise, claiming Iran’s stash of enriched uranium survived the onslaught, according to seven sources briefed on the findings.

The administration is now in full damage-control mode, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissing the DIA report as “low confidence.” That’s Pentagon-speak for “we don’t have enough data to be sure,” a point echoed by experts. 

“Low confidence means the analyst is not sure of the accuracy of their assessment,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “This is frequent with a Quick Look 24-hour assessment like this one.”

Montgomery’s colleague, piled on, noting that “low confidence assessments are usually issued when key facts have yet to be verified, which certainly applies in this case.” Translation: the DIA report might be more of a rough draft than a definitive verdict.

But the skepticism isn’t just coming from the leaked report. Experts are cautioning against snap judgments, both optimistic or pessimistic. 

Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now with the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital that early assessments, like the DIA’s, likely rely on satellite imagery alone. “That’s one piece of the puzzle of how you would really make this assessment,” Shapiro said. “You’d really want to have to test all the other streams of intelligence, from signals intelligence, human intelligence, other forms of monitoring the site, potentially visits by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, potentially visits by other people. So that’s going to take days to weeks to get a real assessment.”

Still, Shapiro’s not entirely bearish. “But I think it’s likely that if the munitions performed as expected, that significant damage was done, and would set back the program significantly,” he added.

Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tried to thread the needle Sunday, saying initial battle damage assessments showed “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction” but admitted a final verdict would “take some time.” That’s a far cry from Trump’s chest-thumping.

The strikes, which followed escalating Israel-Iran tensions, dropped serious firepower, over 14 30,000-lb. bombs, according to Rob Greenway, a former Trump National Security Council deputy assistant now at The Heritage Foundation. 

Greenway says the sheer volume of ordnance means the facilities are likely “no longer serviceable.” “We were putting twice the amount of ordnance required to achieve the desired effect, just to make sure that we didn’t have to go back,” he told Fox News Digital. “There’s virtually no mathematical probability in which either facility can be used again by Iran for the intended purpose, if at all, which again means that everything now is within Israel’s capability to strike if that’s required.”

But assessing the damage isn’t straightforward. Greenway noted the strikes targeted underground facilities, which complicates things. “Each of these are one piece of a much larger puzzle, and you’re trying to gauge the ultimate effect of the entirety of the puzzle, not just one particular strike,” he said. Add in Israel’s prior strikes on the same sites, and it’s a messy intelligence jigsaw puzzle that could take “one or two months” to piece together with higher confidence.

Michael Allen, a former National Security Council senior director under George W. Bush, said the intelligence picture will get “richer” soon. “Stuff is pouring in, and we’re out there collecting it, and they’re trying to hustle it to the White House as soon as possible,” he said.

Meanwhile, the White House is as angry as a bag of cats about the leak. 

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the leaker “irresponsible” and vowed the FBI would hunt them down. “That person was irresponsible with it,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “And we need to get to the bottom of it. And we need to strengthen that process to protect our national security and protect the American public.”

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, weighing in on Fox News’ Special Report, outlined the broader impact of Operation Midnight Hammer on the Middle East, but the real question is whether Trump’s victory lap was premature. For now, the administration’s battling a narrative that its big win might not be as big as advertised, and it’s got a leaked report to thank for the headache.

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Classified Report That Suggested Iranian Nuclear Program Still Intact Likely Relied on Faulty Info From Iranian Sources, Former Intel Officers Sa

The Defense Intelligence Agency’s super-secret report claiming Iran’s nuclear sites took a mere flesh wound from U.S. strikes is a steaming pile of bad intel, peddled by Iranian liars and lapped up by a gullible DIA, according to a cadre of ex-spooks. One of them didn’t mince words: the document’s so worthless, “you can wipe your ass with it.” He wasn't specific as to which ass he was referring to, but Jasmine Crockett is high on the list.

When President Trump green-lit precision strikes on Iran’s top three nuclear facilities, the DIA’s classified assessment sparked a media circus. Leaked to CNN and the New York Times, it was hyped as a shocking reveal that the U.S. bombing only delayed Tehran’s nuclear dreams by a few months, because the leftist media seems to hate Trump more than they hate our enemies.

Cue the headlines, cue the hand-wringing.

But the report was “low-confidence,” a detail CNN conveniently refused to mention, built on shaky satellite imagery and intercepted Iranian chatter, or SIGINT. It turns out, those intercepts were likely Tehran’s military feeding BS to their own leaders, downplaying the carnage, per Axios. That dodgy information wormed its way into the DIA’s report, say three former U.S. intel operatives, a current official, and other natsec vets who dished to the Washington Free Beacon, some off the record. They weren’t kind, calling the DIA the “discount intelligence agency.”

“It’s basically messaging by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], messaging by Tehran,” said Michael Pregent, a former intel officer with nearly three decades in the Middle East. “DIA is taking a SIGINT report from the National Security Agency ... and putting together an assessment to leak. I know it’s messaging, the Iranians know it’s messaging, and for some reason, NSA believes it’s actual f**king intelligence.”

A current U.S. official, in the loop on the damage assessments, said the DIA’s take, and CNN’s “partisan hit job,” got “completely debunked” in the last 24 hours, including by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “It has now been established by the IAEA that Iran’s nuclear program suffered ‘enormous damage’ and the ‘centrifuges ... are completely destroyed,’” the official told the Free Beacon. “The military operation carried out by the United States was a huge success and we are grateful to our troops who valiantly carried out the president’s mission.”

CIA boss John Ratcliffe piled on, saying the agency’s “historically reliable and accurate source/method” confirmed Iran’s key nuclear sites were obliterated, facing years of rebuilding.

Another former spy called the DIA’s report “embarrassing,” saying its analysts didn’t have a clue about Fordow, Iran’s mountain bunker buried under 300 feet of concrete. “You’re not going to see a huge hole down to Hell,” the guy said, speaking on background. “You’re not going to see that they dropped these bombs in specific locations so that they would detonate well underground, because it was such a deeply buried facility.”

The source added: “It’s clear that those people had no idea what they were talking about, and I agree with the fact that undoubtedly all these [Iranians] knew their phones were being monitored by multiple countries and acted accordingly. So, nothing that they said should have been used as any sort of gospel.”

Unless you're the former newspaper NY Times or CNN. They simply cannot allow Trump to prevail.

The DIA’s own “low-confidence” label makes the report a laughingstock. “The fact that the DIA’s assessment was deemed ‘low-confidence’ means that you can wipe your ass with it,” the ex-operative quipped. “You probably get more information from a Free Beacon article,” [or IKEA instructions].

A third former official, steeped in Iran intel, agreed the DIA swallowed “Iranians repeating propaganda to each other, as they have done throughout the war and preceding preparations.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told reporters the DIA’s report was “preliminary” and riddled with “numerous intelligence gaps,” fresh off a Thursday briefing with Trump admin brass.

Michael Rubin, ex-Pentagon adviser, slammed DIA’s habit of drinking their targets’ Kool-Aid [aka piss water]. 

“There’s a long pattern within the DIA in which analysts listen so much to their targets that they actually start to rationalize, if not believe them,” said Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute. “This is why so many DIA Middle East analysts become outspoken conspiracy theorists or advocates for normalizing ties with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Too much Iran leads to becoming analytically, if not morally, unhinged.”

Rubin figures the leak came from a DIA analyst itching to “write the first draft of history” before the report’s flaws were exposed.

Simone Ledeen, former deputy assistant secretary of defense, didn’t hold back. “At a fundamental level, a lot of our analytic corps needs to be completely destroyed and rebuilt,” she told the outlet. “A lot of these people are coming from you know which schools, so they’re totally indoctrinated and they don’t know what they’re talking about because they’re not properly educated anyway.”

A senior DIA official, caught flat-footed, insisted the report wasn’t meant for public eyes and promised to hunt down the leaker. “This is a preliminary, low-confidence assessment, not a final conclusion, and will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available,” the official said. “We have still not been able to review the physical sites themselves, which will give us the best indication. We are working with the FBI and other authorities to investigate the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

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Ex-DIA employee pleads guilty over top-secret leaking to reporters

Henry Kyle Frese, 31, a former employee for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) wasn't very intelligent. He pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to leaking highly classified information to two reporters.

Frese, of Alexandria, Virginia worked as a counterterrorism analyst for the agency from February 2018 to October of last year. He held a top-secret security clearance.

A reporter published eight articles revealing classified material about the capabilities of certain foreign countries' weapons systems, as court papers cited in a press release from the DOJ. The articles contained information from five classified intelligence reports made available only to those DIA staff who were appropriately cleared in the first half of 2018.

The topic covered in all of the reports was outside the scope of Frese’s job duties as an analyst covering counterterrorism, according to the DOJ.

The reporter’s articles contained information derived from the classified intelligence reports, which meant that it had been illegally disclosed and risked damaging national security.

According to court documents, Frese and the reporter lived together from January 2018 to November 2018.

Around April 2018, the reporter introduced Frese to another reporter, whom he began in contact with by telephone and texting, according to the DOJ.

Between mid-2018 and late September 2019, Frese orally transmitted classified information to the first reporter on at least 16 separate occasions, the Justice Department said.

There was no doubt that the scumbag Frese knew the information he was providing was classified at top-secret levels because the documents were visibly labeled as such regarding the level of classification.

The documents Frese accessed were also stored on secure, classified government information systems, according to the DOJ, unlike the documents in which Hillary Clinton used BleachBit and is still on the loose.

On at least 30 separate occasions in 2018, Frese conducted searches on classified government systems for information regarding the classified topics he had discussed with both reporters. On multiple occasions in 2018 and 2019, Frese conducted searches on classified government systems because of specific requests for information.

“Frese violated the trust placed in him by the American people when he disclosed sensitive national security information for personal gain,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers. “He alerted our country’s adversaries to sensitive national defense information, putting the nation’s security at risk."

Frese pleaded guilty to the willful transmission of top-secret national defense information. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison when sentenced in June, which he will hopefully receive and share a cell with an ex-NFL linebacker named Bubba.

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