THE HAGUE — Israel’s preliminary analysis of the damage caused by U.S. strikes on Iran’s main nuclear facilities — based in part on assessments on the ground — shows the attacks inflicted widespread destruction, a senior Israeli official said.
The official, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said that Tehran has been “actively trying to hide the damage” from the Sunday attacks, which President Trump said in The Hague on Wednesday had all but eliminated Iran’s enrichment program.
Trump, who repeatedly defended the effectiveness of the strikes at the NATO summit, made reference to individuals who had been on the ground to assess the damage, without providing details.
“I can’t say it’s a final assessment, because we’re less than a week after,” the Israeli official said. “It’s not like we can send officers openly. But that’s the indication we have now.”
A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said the bombing raid “badly damaged” the nuclear sites, but the Iranian government has said it will continue its nuclear efforts, which it insists are for peaceful purposes.
A full review of the mission could take weeks, and experts have expressed skepticism of declarations by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the U.S. operation was a success within mere days of the attack.
“Battlefield damage assessment is an imprecise art, with initial estimates frequently being way off,” said Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I would be very suspicious of any claims — by Iran, by Trump, by Israel — about what has happened to Iran’s enriched uranium stocks or to its centrifuges.”
Israel’s preliminary findings come after an initial assessment from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cast doubt on the effectiveness of the American strikes. The U.S. intelligence agency said that, based on what it knew at the time, it believed that Iran had retained the core elements of its nuclear program despite the attack. The agency’s assessment was first reported by CNN.
The U.S. strikes came after nine days of an Israeli military campaign that decimated Iran’s air defenses, its military leadership and its ballistic missile stockpiles, while degrading its nuclear facilities.
Israeli intelligence has also monitored the reaction to the campaign among Iranian leadership, which has struggled to comprehend the extent of the damage, the Israeli official said.
“We don’t believe everyone in the leadership knows what really happened, because the whole program was compartmentalized — they weren’t sharing a lot of information, and a lot of the officers who were highly involved on the ground level were eliminated,” the official continued. “So a lot of the top leadership hasn’t fully begun to understand what’s happened.”
The developing intelligence picture comes as Trump defended the U.S. mission, called Operation Midnight Hammer, during multiple appearances at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in The Hague on Wednesday.
“It’s been obliterated, totally obliterated,” he said of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Addressing the U.S. intelligence report, he added: “They did a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it’s just a few days after.”
The U.S. deployment of massive “bunker buster” munitions targeting Iran’s main nuclear sites — including six dropped on Fordo, a facility burrowed deep into the side of a mountain — was intended to bury its most advanced equipment and most highly enriched uranium, which can be used to build nuclear warheads.
Initial assessments of the damage were unclear, but since then, Trump said, “we’ve collected additional intelligence. We’ve also spoken to people that have seen the site, and the site is obliterated.”
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