New information from anonymous U.S. officials concerning recent U.S. airstrikes on Iran has once again been leaked to a major media outlet, according to a report this week.
The Washington Post, allegedly citing several U.S. officials, stated that the U.S. intercepted phone calls between Iranian leaders who appeared to downplay the extent of the damage, citing several U.S. officials.
The intercepted communications reportedly reveal Iranian officials expressing skepticism about the severity of the airstrikes. According to four anonymous sources cited by The Washington Post, the Iranian leaders described the strikes as “less devastating than they had expected.”
The report comes after a June 24 leak of a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that also indicated the damage from U.S. strikes was less extensive than initially reported by the White House.
The assessment, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, was preliminary and suggested Iran’s nuclear program may have been set back by only a few months. But the assessment also noted the intelligence was of “low confidence,” a detail that was not reported by the outlets that received the classified information.
The White House condemned the leak of classified intelligence to the media and rejected claims that the operation failed to inflict significant damage on Iran’s nuclear program.
“It’s shameful that The Washington Post is helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Post. “The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense. Their nuclear weapons program is over.”
The Pentagon and FBI have confirmed that an investigation is ongoing to identify the source of the leaked preliminary intelligence assessment. It’s likely that officials will include this latest leak in their investigation.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump told Fox News that investigators may soon begin pressuring journalists directly to reveal their sources.
“They could find out if they wanted,” Trump said of investigators. “They could find out easily.” He added that CIA and defense investigators may soon pressure journalists to give up their sources. “I suspect we’ll be doing things like that,” he added.
Assessments of the airstrikes’ effectiveness remain mixed, Straight Arrow News reported.
While the preliminary DIA report and intercepted Iranian communications suggest limited damage, other sources—including the CIA, Israeli Defense Forces, and international nuclear watchdogs—indicate extensive destruction at Iranian nuclear sites.
Ryan Robertson of Straight Arrow News recently published a report featuring an interview with a retired Air Force lieutenant general who highlighted the conflicting intelligence, suggesting it could take months before a complete understanding of the damage beneath the rubble emerges.
Meanwhile, last month in the wake of the U.S. strikes, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, officially acknowledged that the strikes caused heavy damage to three of Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to The New York Times.
In an interview with Iranian state television, Araghchi described the nuclear sites as having sustained “significant and serious damages.”
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization is still “surveilling the damages and losses,” Araghchi said. “I have to say, the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”
Earlier, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared on video for the first time since the strikes to proclaim “victory” over Israel and the United States.
“The American regime entered into a direct war because it felt that if it did not enter, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed. But it did not gain anything from this war,” Khamenei said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host and contributor, has also chastised the media for “cheering against Trump” and “undermining the military’s success.”
“There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn’t successful,” Hegseth said. “It’s irresponsible.”