A new intelligence assessment has cast doubt on the Donald Trump administration's claim that American airstrikes had 'totally destroyed' Iran's nuclear program.
According to CNN, the report from the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that this media outlet first disclosed concludes that Iran's nuclear capabilities have been set back only a 'few months,' not eliminated.
While the June 22 strikes caused significant damage to the sites at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, Iran's nuclear infrastructure stayed largely intact, contradicting public assertions by Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Reacting to the claims, in a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that the report was fake and focused on demanding a military strike.
In the post, the president wrote, "Fake news CNN, together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. The nuclear sites in Iran are destroyed! Both the Times and CNN are getting slammed by the public."
On the other hand, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also dismissed the report in a forceful statement, calling it 'flag-out wrong.'
Leavitt further said that the leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly carried out 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 CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have declined to respond to the report, and the Israeli government has likewise withheld any independent evaluation of the attacks.
The DIA's findings are in contradiction to Trump's recent remarks on social media and at the campaign-style rallies, in which he announced that Iran's nuclear sites were destroyed and vowed that Tehran would never rebuild.
Following this, Netanyahu claimed in a television address on Tuesday that he and Trump had ¡°brought to ruin Iran¡¯s nuclear program,¡± framing the joint Israeli-American operation as ¡°historic.¡±
However, the classification by the DIA report reportedly found that while entrances to the buried Fordo enrichment plant were collapsed by the US bunker-buster bombs, the core underground infrastructure survived.
It also determined that essential equipment, such as the centrifuges used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade, was probably moved ahead of the strike and is still functioning.
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