US President Donald Trump and the White House on Tuesday sharply pushed back against a new intelligence assessment that casts doubt on the administration’s claim that American airstrikes had “totally destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program.
The report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which was first disclosed by CNN, concludes that Iran’s nuclear capabilities have been set back only “a few months,” not eliminated.
According to the assessment, while the June 22 strikes caused substantial damage to sites at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure remains largely intact – contradicting public assertions by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a post on Truth social, Donald Trump said that the report was fake and aimed at demanding the military strike.
“Fake news CNN, together with the failing New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history. The nuclear sites in Iran are completely destroyed! Both the Times and CNN are getting slammed by the public,” he wrote.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also dismissed the report in a forceful statement, labeling it “flat-out wrong.”
“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,” Leavitt said. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Neither the CIA nor the Office of the Director of National Intelligence commented on the report. The Israeli government has also refrained from releasing any independent assessment of the strikes.
What does the report state
The DIA’s findings stand in direct contradiction to Trump’s recent remarks on social media and at campaign-style rallies, in which he has declared that Iran’s nuclear sites were “totally destroyed” and vowed that Tehran “will never rebuild.”
Similarly, Netanyahu claimed in a televised address Tuesday that he and Trump had “brought to ruin Iran’s nuclear program,” framing the joint Israeli-American operation as “historic.”
But the classified DIA report reportedly found that while entrances to the deeply buried Fordo enrichment plant were collapsed by US bunker-buster bombs, the core underground infrastructure survived. It also concluded that key equipment – including centrifuges used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels – had likely been relocated before the attack and remains operational.
Two people familiar with the intelligence, who spoke on condition of anonymity to news agency AP, said Iran had likely anticipated the strike and moved portions of its 60% enriched uranium stockpile offsite, a claim backed by satellite imagery showing truck activity days prior to the airstrikes.
What White House says
Despite the assessment, the Trump administration and its allies are standing by their messaging.
Vice President JD Vance echoed the White House line in an interview with Fox News, arguing that depriving Iran of the ability to further enrich its uranium or weaponize it constitutes “obliteration.”
“If they have 60% enriched uranium, but they don’t have the ability to enrich it to 90%, and, further, they don’t have the ability to convert that to a nuclear weapon, that is mission success,” Vance said.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, went further, calling the leak of the DIA assessment “treasonous” and demanding an investigation.
