U.S. strikes crippled Iran’s nuclear program, Israeli analysis finds
The Hague – The preliminary analysis of Israel of damage caused by American strikes on the main nuclear installations of Iran – based in part from the field assessments – shows that the attacks have inflicted general destruction, said a senior Israeli official.
The official, granted to anonymity to speak frankly, said that Tehran had “actively tried to hide the” Sunday attacks, which, according to President Trump, in The Hague, had almost eliminated the Iran enrichment program.
Trump, who has repeatedly defended the effectiveness of NATO summit strikes, referred to the people who had been on the ground to assess the damage, without providing details.
“I cannot say that this is a final assessment because we are less than a week later,” said the Israeli official. “It is not as if we could openly send the officers. But this is the indication that we have now. ”
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday that the bombing of “damaged” nuclear sites, but the Iranian government said that it would pursue its nuclear efforts, which it insists on being for peaceful purposes.
A complete examination of the mission could take weeks, and the experts expressed skepticism of the declarative declarations of Trump and the defense secretary Pete Hegseth that the American operation was a success in the few days of the attack.
“The evaluation of damage to the battlefield is an imprecise art, with initial estimates frequently far,” said Patrick Clawson, expert in Iran and research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I would be very suspicious of any assertion – by Iran, by Trump, by Israel – what happened to Iranian enriched uranium actions or its centrifuges.”
The preliminary conclusions of Israel intervene after an initial assessment of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, to cast a doubt about the effectiveness of American strikes, declaring with low confidence that Iran had kept the fundamental elements of its nuclear program despite the attacks, said a familiar American official with the conclusions in Times. The DIA evaluation was reported for the first time by CNN.
The American attack followed nine days from an Israeli military campaign which decimated the air defenses of Iran, its military leadership and its stock of ballistic missiles, while degrading its nuclear installations.
Israeli information has also monitored the reaction to the campaign among the Iranian leaders, who has struggled to understand the extent of the damage themselves, said the Israeli official.
“We do not believe that everyone in leadership knows what really happened, because the whole program was compartmentalized – they did not share much information, and many officers very involved in the ground level were eliminated,” continued the manager. “Thus, a large part of high -level leadership did not fully understand what happened.”
The image of developing intelligence occurs while Trump defended the American mission, entitled Operation Midnight Hammer, during several appearances at the top of NATO in The Hague on Wednesday.
“It was erased, completely erased,” he said about Iranian nuclear installations. Addressing the DIA report, he added: “They reported, but it was as if you are looking at the dates, it’s only a few days later.”
The American deployment of massive ammunition of “Bunker Buster” targeting the main nuclear sites of Iran – six whispered, an installation has deeply dug in the side of a mountain – was intended to bury its most advanced equipment and the most enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear warheads.
The initial damage assessments were not clear, but since then Trump said: “We have collected additional information. We also talked to people who saw the site, and the site is erased. ”
