Intel suggests US strikes on Iran caused limited damage – WaPo

Intercepted conversations show that Tehran officials expected a worse impact from the attacks on nuclear facilities

US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were far less destructive than expected, according to intercepted communications between senior Iranian officials published by the Washington Post.

The strikes in question were part of a coordinated American-Israeli military campaign launched earlier this month. On June 13, the IDF began bombing Iranian targets, claiming that Tehran was close to being able to build nuclear weapons. The US joined the operation on June 22, targeting several Iranian nuclear facilities, including the underground Fordow site, which was struck using 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs. 

US President Donald Trump has claimed that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. CIA Director John Ratcliffe told lawmakers last week that several key sites had been completely destroyed and would take years to rebuild.

However, according to the intercepted conversations described to the Post by four sources familiar with the intelligence, Iranian officials have been speculating as to why the strikes did not cause greater damage.

The Trump administration has not denied the existence of the intercepted calls, but officials have flatly rejected their significance. 

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“The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, calling the report “shameful” and accusing WaPo of “helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks.”

Last week, several American media outlets also reported on leaked classified intelligence assessments that suggested the US strikes only caused moderate damage to the facilities, despite the use of bunker buster bombs. Trump has since called for the prosecution of those who leaked the information.

In a CBS interview published on Sunday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi also claimed that there are still 400kg worth of enriched uranium that remain unaccounted for after the US-Israeli strikes. 

“We don’t know where this material could be, or if part of it could have been under the attack during those 12 days,” Grossi told CBS, noting that some of it could have been destroyed and some could have been moved.

He also pointed out that while Iran’s facilities suffered “a very serious level of damage,” Tehran could still restart its uranium enrichment operations “in a matter of months.” He noted that the knowledge possessed by Iran cannot be “disinvented.”

Tehran has repeatedly denied that it has plans to produce a nuclear weapon and has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, stressing that it wants to reserve the right to enrich uranium for civilian use.