Hague – Israel's preliminary analysis of the damage caused by US attacks in Iran's main nuclear facilities, based in part on the evaluations in the field, shows that the attacks inflicted a generalized destruction, said a senior Israeli official.
The official granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that Tehran has been “actively trying to hide the damage” of Sunday's attacks, which President Trump said in Hague on Wednesday he had eliminated Iran's enrichment program.
Trump, who repeatedly defended the effectiveness of strikes at the NATO summit, referred to people who had been on the ground to assess the damage, without providing details.
“I cannot say that it is a final evaluation, because we are less than a week later,” said the Israeli official. “It is not that we can send the officers openly. But that is the indication that we have now.”
A spokesman from Iran's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that the “severely damaged” bombing raid, nuclear sites, but the Iranian government has said that it will continue its nuclear efforts, which it insists are for peaceful purposes.
A complete review of the mission could take weeks, and experts have expressed skepticism of the statements of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that the operation of the United States was a success within a few days after the attack.
“The damage assessment on the battlefield is an inaccurate art, with initial estimates that are often very far,” said Patrick Clawson, an expert in Iran and research director at the Washington Institute for the Policy of the Near East. “I would suspect any statement, for Iran, for Trump, for Israel, about what has happened with the enriched uranium actions of Iran or its centrifuging.”
Israel's preliminary findings occur after an initial evaluation of the United States Defense Intelligence Agency in doubt about the effectiveness of US strikes. The United States intelligence agency said that, according to what he knew at that time, he believed that Iran had preserved the central elements of its nuclear program despite the attack. The agency's evaluation was first reported by CNN.
The American strikes arrived after nine days of an Israeli military campaign that decimated the air defenses of Iran, their military leadership and their ballistic missile reserves, while degrading their nuclear facilities.
Israeli intelligence has also monitored the reaction to the campaign among Iranian leadership, which has fought to understand the scope of the damage, said the Israeli official.
“We do not believe that all in the leadership know what really happened, because the entire program was compartmentalized: they were not sharing much information, and many of the officers who were very involved in the ground level were eliminated,” the official continued. “So much of the main leadership has not begun to completely understand what happened.”
The developing intelligence image occurs when Trump defended the mission of the United States, called Operation Midnantn Hammer, for multiple appearances at the Summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in The Hague on Wednesday.
“It has been erased, totally erased,” he said about Iran's nuclear facilities. When heading to the United States intelligence report, he added: “They made a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it's just a few days later.”
The American deployment of mass ammunition of “Buster Bunker” aimed at the main nuclear sites of Iran, including six fallen in Fordo, an installation excavated on the side of a mountain, intended to bury its most advanced equipment and the most highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear warfalls.
The initial damage evaluations were not clear, but since then, Trump said: “We have collected additional intelligence. We have also talked to people who have seen the site, and the site is erased.”
