The US Department of Defense has launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a classified report from its Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which concluded that the US attack did not cause a significant setback to Tehranʼs nuclear program.
This was reported by Politico, citing the words of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth.
“We are investigating the leak jointly with the FBI, as this information was intended for internal use and combat casualty assessments,” the official said at the NATO summit in The Hague on June 25.
Hegset added that media reports based on the data were intended to “spin the situation around to make the president look bad, even though it was an undisputed victory”. His comments came after President Donald Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the media reports fake news.
The Pentagon chief did not provide details of the investigation, but questioned the reliability of the DIA analysis. Pete Hegseth said that the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities was “moderate to severe”.
“We believe that, most likely, [the damage] is severe — up to and including complete destruction,” the secretary added.
Rubio told Politico that Tehran is now "much further away from building a nuclear weapon" after Washington dropped 14 bombs, each weighing 30 000 pounds, on three key Iranian nuclear sites.
What preceded
On the night of June 22, the United States attacked three Iranian nuclear facilities in the cities of Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. American B-2 stealth bombers dropped six GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Iranʼs Fordow nuclear facility, two GBU-57 bombs on the Natanz nuclear facility, and a U.S. Navy submarine launched a salvo of 30 Tomahawk missiles, targeting the Natanz facility and another in Isfahan. Details of the operation are available here.
Trump claimed that all three sites had been “totally and irreversibly destroyed”. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Kaine, had previously said that the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had been “severely damaged”, but he stopped short of saying that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “destroyed”.
Following the US strike, Iran attacked Israel, launching at least 27 missiles in two salvos. More than 80 people were injured.
And on June 23, Iran launched several missiles at American military bases in the Middle East.
- The details of the American attack were described by several publications, citing officials who had read a classified report. The New York Times wrote that the US strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan blocked the entrances to two of them, but did not destroy the underground structures.
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