US Attack Likely Set Iran Nuke Program Back Mere Months

The preliminary DIA assessment has been leaked.

CNN (“Exclusive: Early US intel assessment suggests strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites, sources say“):

The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.

The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available. But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear ambitions “have been obliterated.”

Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.

The White House acknowledged the existence of the assessment but said they disagreed with it.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Trump, who’s in the Netherlands attending this week’s NATO summit, pushed back on CNN’s report in a Truth Social post. “One of the most successful military strikes in history,” Trump wrote in the all-caps post adding, “The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed!”

The US military has said the operation went as planned and that it was an “overwhelming success.”

It is still early for the US to have a comprehensive picture of the impact of the strikes, and none of the sources described how the DIA assessment compares to the view of other agencies in the intelligence community. The US is continuing to pick up intelligence, including from within Iran as they assess the damage.

It’s almost certainly too soon for a complete assessment, which would presumably require actual inspectors on the ground. But this is consistent with longstanding unclassified assessments of what was possible from an aerial strike on the facilities and, indeed, why previous administrations decided an attack was unwise.

Still, as retired Lieutenant General Charles Hamilton, who retired under duress* last year as head of Army Materiel Command, writes (“Saturday’s strike on Iran was perfectly timed“), the circumstances could hardly have been more favorable.

The bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites represents the culmination of what may be the most rehearsed, examined, and studied war plan of the last twenty years. President Trump’s swift shift from diplomacy to direct action—just a month ago, he was holding Israel at arm’s length, pursuing talks with Tehran, and warming relations with Gulf countries with little appetite for war—appears to reflect a unique convergence of favorable conditions. 

The first is Israel’s systematic and sequential degradation of Iran’s network of proxy groups since Hamas’ October 2023 attack.

A more recent development is Israel’s assault on Iran itself. Since June 9, missile attacks and special operations have degraded Iran’s air defense network, penetrated and consequently disrupt Iran’s military communications, and helped deplete and destroy perhaps half of its missile arsenal. The first two effects enabled the U.S. strikes with unprecedentedly low risk to American forces, while the last two reduced the threat of effective retaliation.

 And a third condition, of longer standing, is the state of the U.S. military’s arsenal and operational art. The GBU-57/B “bunker-buster” bombs that pulverized Iran’s Fordo facility were designed by the U.S. Air Force beginning in 2004 for exactly this mission. The 30,000-pound munitions are the only U.S. weapon that can penetrate the hundreds of feet of concrete and rock protecting Iran’s most critical nuclear infrastructure. Saturday marked their first combat use, dropped from B-2 stealth bombers, while a submarine fired Tomahawk missiles from waters south of Iran.  

Operation Midnight Hammer was one of the most complex, coordinated, and sequenced military operations ever conducted. The strike required coordination across geographic combatant commands in secrecy that limited the number of leaders aware of the timing. It required deception, deconfliction of a tight airspace corridor, and communication across every operational domain. If the attack is eventually found to have destroyed Fordo—a facility that many analysts considered virtually impregnable—it would validate two decades of military planning and technological development.

The convergence of factors that made Saturday’s operation possible was both rare and temporary. Iran’s air defenses will eventually be rebuilt, its proxy networks reconstituted, and its communication systems restored. The IRGC’s command structure will adapt to operating under compromised conditions, and new leaders will emerge to replace those eliminated by Israeli operations.

More fundamentally, Iran’s nuclear program itself will evolve. Tehran will disperse its uranium stockpiles, harden additional facilities, and could build a nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, while we don’t know the damage done at the point of enrichment, Saturday’s strike set back that timeline.

The combination of Iran’s degraded ability to intercept an attack and to retaliate in its aftermath changed the calculus. But, of course, the attack has changed Iran’s calculus.


Hamilton was a four-star, forced to retire early as a three-star after it was revealed that he’d abused his authority to advance the career of a subordinate with whom he was having an affair. So far as I can ascertain, though, he was otherwise a highly competent officer and qualified to make assessments of operations.

FILED UNDER: Middle East, Military Affairs, National Security, World Politics, , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is a Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. I think Hamilton is almost certainly correct about both the timing and the technical execution of the attack. But if it only sets Iran back a few months, then so what? And, as you note, it changed Iran’s calculations about what to do next.

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  2. Scott says:

    Totally tangential to the topic:

    Female Troops Played Key Roles in B-2, Submarine Strikes on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

    Operation Midnight Hammer, the name of the U.S. military’s coordinated strikes against three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend, marked the longest B-2 Spirit stealth bomber mission since 2001 and the inaugural use of the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb in combat.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised the work of “our boys in those bombers” during a press conference at the Pentagon on Sunday.

    But female troops also played key roles in the Iran strikes. “Women were incorporated in all aspects of the mission,” a U.S. official told Military.com on Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the operation.

    At least one woman served as a B-2 bomber pilot during the mission, that official said. Another official confirmed women were on a guided missile submarine crew that launched more than two dozen cruise missiles at the Iranian nuclear sites.

    I love the quiet pushback.

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  3. Michael Reynolds says:

    The Air Force and Navy no doubt executed very professionally. One is reminded of the phrase ‘lions led by donkeys.’

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  4. Jay L Gischer says:

    Caroline Leavitt mentioned the “brave fighter pilots”. Were any fighters involved? I’m pretty sure that bombs that big are dropped by bombers. And that those bombers have multiple people on them, all of whom are brave.

    Is she really that dumb, or is it that she thinks we are that dumb?

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  5. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Jay L Gischer:
    See, Tom Cruise was a fighter pilot.

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  6. charontwo says:

    @Jay L Gischer:

    Bombers were accompanied by fighter-bombers for air defense suppression.

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  7. @Jay L Gischer: What @charontwo said. Bombers are almost always escorted by fighters and, in this case, air-to-air refuelers.

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  8. @Steven L. Taylor: Agreed. I honestly don’t know what the experts were telling Trump about the likelihood of massive destruction of the facilities, since all I have to go on are open sources. I gather Eric Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander who happens to look like Hollywood thinks a general should, was enthusiastic.

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  9. Matt Bernius says:

    @James Joyner:
    Who would guess that staffing primarily based on a combination of looks and loyalty to Trump could impact communications and analysis?

    Also, this really is a prime example of when having credible civilian leadership is critical. I realize some will accuse me of partisanship, but having a Commander in Chief, advisors, and cabinet members so willing to lie to the public over the most trivial of issues makes moments like this even more difficult.

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  10. Scott says:
  11. @Matt Bernius: It is less than ideal.

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  12. Kathy says:

    @James Joyner:

    I gather Eric Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander who happens to look like Hollywood thinks a general should…

    That’s pretty much the gist, premise, denouement, plot twist, climax, and ending of the whole farce: it fits the Hollywood narrative.

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  13. CSK says:

    At the NATO conference, Trump is still insisting that the Iranian nuclear program was totally obliterated.

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  14. Daryl says:

    Trump, who denied the intelligence assessments before the mission, is now denying the damage assessment after the mission. Does anyone notice a pattern?

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  15. JKB says:

    Oh look, leaks of classified information from an intelligence agency. In this case, one with the storied history of their Cuba expert, the US IC community Cuba expert, was found to have been a Cuban asset from the time she was in college, and hired by the DIA.

    Ana Montes was a Cuban agent who worked within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and spied for the Cuban government for 17 years. She was arrested on September 21, 2001, and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage for Cuba, receiving a 25-year prison sentence.
    Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence while she was a student at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s and was known for her strong support of left-wing Latin American movements

    We won’t know the real impact for some time, but leaked reports from the US IC community that worked to stop Trump from becoming president should always be suspect.

    But it is good to now know the US IC community acknowledges that Iran was working to develop nuclear warheads and were close to completion. Just a bit different than how they briefed Tulsi Gabbard for her appearance before Congress in March.

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  16. Daryl says:

    @JKB:
    Kinda butt-hurt that your cult leader is a dumbass, huh?
    Shades of “Mission Accomplished.”

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  17. Daryl says:

    @CSK:
    He has no choice. How do you walk back that kind of definitive declaration??? There’s no shades of grey in “totally and completely obliterated.”

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  18. Slugger says:

    I previously thought that the attack on Iran’s bunkers must have been planned for months. It was part of a one-two punch. Israel bombs and degrades Iran’s air defenses, and then the B2s fly. This had to be coordinated. How long has Bibi been planning this? At least six months is my guess. You and I and Trump have been getting played.
    If there is a follow-up attack in three weeks, Trump will not have to recant his current triumphant statements. His opponents don’t expect any truth from him. His adherents will stick through every twist and turn as they have so far. Yes, some pundits will be able to point out an inconsistency, but that tactic has been impotent so far.

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  19. Raoul says:

    Of course the attack did not work. What everybody needs to understand is that if Iran wants to get an a-bomb, it will. The threat does not lie in the bomb but in who has the bomb. If one doesn’t want Iran’s theocracy to get the bomb one will need to replace the regime.

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  20. CSK says:

    @Daryl:

    Well, Trump is now backtracking somewhat, saying that the assessment of Iran’s nuclear program isn’t complete. He also said he would be talking to Iran next week.

  21. inhumans99 says:

    @CSK:

    We all know that some type of new JCPOA is quickly coming down the pike since at best this setback Iran by a year or so. All this talk about Iran having to unconditionally surrender because Trump says that is the only option on the table is beyond laughable.

    Unless Trump and Bibi are willing to put lots of boots on the ground regime change in Iran is a fantasy and everyone and their mothers knows this.

    Connor, your gleeful post where you enjoyed owning the libs by pointing out that Operation Midnight Hammer was a glorious success and seemed to imply that only Trump could pull this off, well…that rather quickly did not age well and is now curdled milk.

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  22. Andy says:

    Just a couple of inside-baseball things on these types of reports:

    The key word is that it’s a preliminary analysis.

    Consistent with that, the report’s conclusions are “low confidence,” which is not surprising. Low confidence in an intelligence assessment means the following:
    – The information is too scant, questionable, or fragmented to make a firm judgment.
    – The sources may be unreliable or too incomplete to assess with certainty.
    – Low confidence judgments are considered speculative and highly uncertain.

    Not surprising considering how quickly this report came out and that it’s only based on Imagery and SIGINT analysis (ie. it’s not an all-source product), and even then, it looks to be primarily focused on the BDA of the three sites the US struck. I haven’t seen any reporting that other sites are included in the analysis.

    Additionally, as is always the case in DC, leakers usually have agendas and may not leak the full scope or context. Additionally, media outlets choose to report and disclose information differently -not all media outlets have reported the same details.

    That said, it seems apparent that DIA at this point believes the MOPs didn’t fully penetrate the underground facilities, especially Fordo, which is also not totally surprising. It’s always been an open question whether this weapon could reach as deep as Fordo and some of the other sites. The weaponeering and employment looked flawless to me – multiple devices targeting the air shafts, but maybe it wasn’t enough.

    A significant missing piece is the various assumptions that underlie any analysis of this kind. Are they only looking at these three sites, or are they also considering damage elsewhere, to other facilities that are critical to the ability to actually make a nuke? What level of damage, if any, did Fordo suffer? None or some amount? In judging the program delay, are they considering the timeline to make any nuclear device that can go boom, or an operational weapon that could be used on a missile? We don’t really know. And again, as a preliminary report that is not surprising. It’s quite likely that the Iranians currently don’t know the full scope of the damage they’ve received.

    As a practical matter, unless new weapons are being invented, this shows what we’ve long known – that going deep underground provides a lot of protection from attack and destruction. That is certainly the direction Iran has been heading for a while now – they have been busy little bees for a number of years building new, deeply-buried facilities.

    Whatever any final, “high confidence” conclusions the IC eventually determines, it still remains the case that military action against a program like this can only delay a government that is determined to either get nukes or become a threshold state.

    Finally, what there does seem to be broad agreement on is that Iran’s roughly 400k of HEU was probably not destroyed. This, alone, is a pretty massive failure of the operation. Because enrichment is non-linear, it is significantly easier to go from HEU to bomb-grade than it is to start from scratch. The fact that this material probably still exists – by itself – shortens the timeline for Iran to actually get a bomb by a huge amount.

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  23. just nutha says:

    @CSK: The sad part is that he thinks anyone still cares now that the preliminary DIA has leaked. He’s really pretty clueless. Sad. Low energy.

    Bigly sad and low energy.

  24. just nutha says:

    @Daryl: Not “walk back,” you “walk away.”

  25. @JKB: Indeed! Whatabout Cuba?

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  26. @Andy:

    The key word is that it’s a preliminary analysis.

    This is certainly important to underscore, and I agree with your comment.

  27. JohnSF says:

    The question is, how do you calulate the “mere months”.
    The enriched uranium will still be extant, generally.
    Therefore, it could be “mere months” IF it’s assumed the isotpic enrichment capability is as was.
    That’s the big question, and trying to guess that absent good damage assesment is a fools errand.

    We simply dont know as yet what enrichment capacity was put out of operation at Natanz and Fordow, nor how rapidly it may be repairable.

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  28. JohnSF says:

    Actually “destroying” uranium is a non-trivial exercise, absent a nuclear reactor or explosion
    (lol for highly unfunny values of “lol”).

    It may be scattered.
    But given its value, the obvious solution is to collect the debris, run various chemical separation operations and, voila: uranium.

    The istopic content of which will be roughly that of the overall uraninium that was “blown up”, whatever that may have been.

    Or, more likely, not so much “blown up” as the contents of a buggered up centrifuge cascade.

    So once recovered, its just a question putting it back into the isotopic separation process.
    ASSUMING there is one, which is the key qustion here.

    And the key thing we DON’T KNOW.

    We may be able to tell though, from observed and inferred power consumption of the sites.
    After a while.

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  29. The Q says:

    The 400 lbs of enriched uranium? It’s with the yellow cake from Niger

    I think we should start to suspect the intel and Pentagon estimates regarding our “enemies”.

    Time and time again I think they vastly OVER estimate their capabilities to harm us. Why?

    Obviously, this justifies the incredibly bloated defense budgets .

    I am of the belief that if NATO went full force against Russia in Ukraine, that war would be over in a month. Russia will be crushed.

    Similarly with Iran. They gave us WARNING about the Qatar bombings. They are toothless and don’t want to mess with us.

    Since 9-11, how many grisly attacks on US soil by Al Qaida? Like none? But we need to stress the danger otherwise POP goes the $1 trillion DOD budget.

    China, if they invade Taiwan will have their fleet destroyed and suffer huge casualties if there is an amphibious attack. Plus the fact that haven’t been in a large scale war in 70 years means no battle hardened Generals or troops.

    Taking the politics out of it, Trump scored a major victory. He gave teeth to our threats and took advantage of the extremely timely advantages outlined in above articles. I still think he should be jailed in Leavenworth, but hitting Iran while she’s down made sense. And so far, much to the neolibs chagrin, there has been zero blowback.

    If I was POTUS, I would have told Bibi, we will bomb Iran only if you resign. If he refused, I would leak it to Israeli press that he chose self preservation over US bombing nuke sites in Iran.

  30. DK says:

    Most Americans oppose Trump’s Iran strikes, new poll finds (Politico)

    A majority of Americans disapprove of President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran on Saturday, according to a new poll from CNN.

    The survey, conducted Sunday and Monday, found that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the strikes, with 44 percent expressing approval of the decision.

    This, coupled with Trump’s generally flagging approval rating including on immigration and especially on inflation, is why the rapist and the drunk are scrambling to spin the strikes as a “completely and totally obliterated” success. The whole episode seems sort of pointless –not a good reason for Trump to kill people or to break his promise to end wars, not involve us in more of them.

  31. just nutha says:

    @JohnSF: I keep holding Trump to the same standard the I held for pronouncements that the former president of the college I worked at made: if she said “the weather is nice,” I looked outside to check. No trust, only verify.

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