Israeli officials see "significant" damage to Iran's nuclear facilities

Axios

5 hours ago

Israeli intelligence services believe U.S. and Israeli strikes caused "very significant" damage to Iran's nuclear facilities, with some officials perplexed by a leaked U.S. intelligence report that suggested otherwise.
Like the U.S., Israel has not produced a final assessment on how far back the bombing campaign has set Iran's nuclear program, three officials told Axios.
Why it matters: The emerging Israeli assessment presents a far more optimistic view of the operation than a preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which assessed the strikes may have set Iran back only a few months.
President Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear program has been "obliterated" came under scrutiny Tuesday after the DIA report was leaked to CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post and multiple other outlets.
The leak infuriated the White House, which rejected the findings as "fake news" and accused anonymous officials of seeking to undermine Trump.
The big picture: Israel, which initiated the war and faces a far more direct threat from Iran than the U.S., is largely satisfied with the early results from Trump's military strike on Saturday.
"A professional battle damage assessment takes time," an Israeli official stressed, suggesting it was far too soon to draw the kinds of conclusions included in the DIA report.
"Israeli intelligence services haven't arrived at any bottom lines for now," the official added. "But we don't think there was any bug in the operation, and we have no indications the bunker-buster bombs didn't work. Nobody here is disappointed."
Between the lines: The classified DIA report was based on early intelligence from just one agency, and the overall picture remains muddled — especially with Iran itself still assessing the damage and weighing its next moves.
Still, the existence of the report — paired with the abrupt postponement of congressional briefings on Tuesday — has ignited deep frustration among Democrats over Trump's cavalier approach to sensitive intelligence.
"I'm very concerned about [Trump] distorting, manipulating and even lying about intelligence," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told Axios. "We've been here before. We went to war in Iraq under false pretenses."
The other side: Trump and his aides have doubled down on the success of the B-2 bombing operation and lashed out at the media for reporting on the early intelligence assessment.
"Leaking that type of information — whatever the information, whatever side it comes out on — is outrageous. It's treasonous," White House envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News.
"We put 12 bunker-buster bombs on Fordow," Witkoff continued, referring to Iran's most fortified underground nuclear site. "There's no doubt that it breached the canopy … and there's no doubt that it was obliterated."
Behind the scenes: Israeli officials said the Iranian government has been engaged in its own battle damage assessment to determine the state of its nuclear program.
An Israeli official with direct knowledge of intelligence on Iran told Axios that intercepted communications suggest Iranian military officials have been giving false situation reports to the country's political leadership — downplaying the extent of the damage.
"The Iranians themselves still don't even have a clear idea what happened to some of their nuclear facilities," a second Israeli official said.
Zoom in: Israeli officials said the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan — the three sites targeted in the U.S. strike on Saturday — is "very significant."
At Natanz, the above-ground enrichment facility was completely destroyed, and signs point to the collapse of its underground infrastructure, an Israeli official said.
At Fordow, the U.S. military's 30,000-pound bunker-busters inflicted major damage on the facility — though Israeli officials say it remains unclear whether the underground areas suffered full structural collapse.
At Isfahan, Israeli officials said the uranium reprocessing facility — which produces the uranium metal used in bomb-making — was destroyed. Isfahan's underground tunnels were also damaged, but the full scope is still being assessed.
"We doubt that these facilities can be activated any time in the near future," an Israeli official said.
The intrigue: Two Israeli officials also claimed that intelligence shows Iran's stockpile of 60% and 20% enriched uranium is now buried beneath rubble at Isfahan and Fordow — and it's unclear whether Iran will be able to recover it in the near future.
Zoom out: Beyond the direct damage to Iran's nuclear facilities, Israeli officials say the broader war effort dealt a crippling blow to Iran's long-term nuclear capabilities.
Israel assassinated dozens of A-list and B-list nuclear scientists — key figures with both institutional memory and hands-on expertise — during the 12-day conflict.
Several of Iran's centrifuge production lines were destroyed, significantly limiting the country's ability to replace the thousands of centrifuges lost in the Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
The IDF also destroyed labs and testing facilities that housed scientific equipment critical to Iran's nuclear weapons research and development, according to an Israeli official.