Strike Set Back Iran's Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says - The New York Times
By: Julian E. Barnes Helene Cooper Eric Schmitt Ronen Bergman Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (nytimes)
The attack was only marginally successful says NYT report.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
June 24, 2025, 3:20 p.m. ET
A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of Iran's nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months, the officials said.
Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program was delayed less than six months.
Former officials said that any rushed effort by Iran to get a bomb would be to develop a relatively small and crude device. A miniaturized warhead would be far more difficult to produce, and it is not clear how much damage to that more advanced research has taken place.
The findings suggest that President Trump's statement that Iran's nuclear facilities were obliterated was overstated, at least based on the initial damage assessment. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings of the assessment, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday.
The report also said much of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Some of that may have been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
Tags
Who is online
245 visitors
Thats nice.
How shocking !
A preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings, according to officials familiar with the findings.
The early findings conclude that the strikes over the weekend set back Iran’s nuclear program by only a few months, the officials said.
Before the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies had said that if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months. After the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force, the report by the Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that the program was delayed less than six months.
Former officials said that any rushed effort by Iran to get a bomb would be to develop a relatively small and crude device. A miniaturized warhead would be far more difficult to produce, and it is not clear how much damage to that more advanced research has taken place.
The findings suggest that President Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated was overstated, at least based on the initial damage assessment. Congress had been set to be briefed on the strike on Tuesday, and lawmakers were expected to ask about the findings of the assessment, but the session was postponed. Senators are now set be briefed on Thursday.
The report also said much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Some of that may have been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.
Some Israeli officials said they also believe that Iran has maintained small covert enrichment facilities that were built so the Iranian government could continue its nuclear program in the event of an attack on the larger facilities.
Officials cautioned that the five-page classified report is only an initial assessment, and others will follow as more information is collected and as Iran examines the three sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. One official said that the reports people in the administration had been shown were “mixed” but that more assessments were yet to be done.
But the Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped, and that Iran retains control of almost all of its nuclear material, meaning if it decides to make a nuclear weapon it might still be able to do so relatively quickly.
Officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because the findings of the report remain classified.
The White House took issue with the assessment. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said it was “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,” she said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
Elements of the intelligence report were reported earlier by CNN .
The strikes badly damaged the electrical system at Fordo, which is housed deep inside a mountain to shield it from attacks, officials said. It is not clear how long it will take Iran to gain access to the underground buildings and then repair the electrical systems and reinstall equipment that was moved.
Initial Israeli damage assessments have also raised questions of the effectiveness of the strikes. Israeli defense officials said they have also collected evidence that the underground facilities at Fordo were not destroyed.
Before the strike, the U.S. military gave officials a range of possibilities for how much the attack could set back the Iranian program. Those ranged from a few months on the low end to years on the higher end.
Some officials cautioned that such estimates are imprecise, and that it is impossible to know how long Iran would exactly take to rebuild, if it chose to do so.
Mr. Trump has declared that B-2 bombing raids and Navy Tomahawk missile strikes “obliterated” the three Iranian nuclear sites, an assertion that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeated at a Pentagon news conference on Sunday.
But Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been more careful in describing the attack’s effects.
“This operation was designed to severely degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure,” General Caine said that at the Sunday news conference.
The final battle damage assessment for the military operation against Iran, General Caine said on Sunday, standing next to Mr. Hegseth, was still to come. He said the initial assessment showed that all three of the Iranian nuclear sites that were struck “sustained severe damage and destruction.”
At a Senate hearing on Monday, Democrats also struck a more cautionary note in challenging Mr. Trump’s assessment.
“We still await final battle damage assessments,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.
Military officials had said that to do more significant damage to the underground sites, they would have to be hit with multiple strikes. But Mr. Trump announced he would stop the strikes after approving the first wave.
You have to be a moron to believe anything from the times,
Karline Leavitt confirmed the report. Is she a moron also?
Which part of this says confirmed?
Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokeswoman, said it was “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,” she said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
"The flat out wrong" or the "Alleged"
OK... I don't know that.
It sounds plausible, but I think most people don't know the difference in real terms between a 30,000lb bomb and a 300lb bomb. It's not like we've all lived through air raids.
Since nobody has had them dropped on them before, if sure Ms. Leavitt is basing her comments on the Airforce tests. but i agree until we get real onsite assessment, we can't know the damage. nobody can.
Is this the first time we've used them?
She confirmed the existence of the report, now set aside your Trump Devotion Syndrome and ask she-who-must-be-believed how an alleged assessment can be leaked.The ladies grasp of English is as woeful as her persistent mendacity.
Next time don't cherry-pick part of her statements, you left out:
"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." When someone gets that bitchy they are generally lying.
On an actual target? Yes.
Doesn't seem to be very classified.
Plus the same group that was telling us 2 days ago that you can't tell how much damage there was now can definitively state there wasn't that much damage. TDS does strange things to people.
What do you think the chances are Trump would lie about how much damage was done ? 99.9% sounds about right to me.
I think that's optimistic. You need more 9s.
No, it doesn't. So, we're being asked to believe an assessment from a supposedly secret document which no one has or can examine, released by the usual "source familiar with the matter" meme and in a tremendous display of journalistic prowess, the media is pushing it for all its worth or, in this case more likely, not worth.
I'm no battle damage assessment expert but I would be astonished if anyone could come up with a verifiable and reliable assessment of something that is centered in the middle of a hostile country this fast. I think it's likely to take weeks.
My thoughts exactly.
The only thing I can think of that might change that is the presence of Israeli intelligence on the ground. We have to think they have extensive assets embedded in Iran, and probably in the nuclear program. So I could understand it if the information came from one of those sources.
Yeah. Was having the same thoughts. Only thing is, I'm not sure I'd trust them to give us the truth concerning the damage. They have a decided interest in keeping us in their game, so to speak. I'd still find other ways other than their intel to get a better picture.
Yeah.
But.
The more effective line of intel there would be to "discover" more sites or more people. There really isn't a lot of benefit to them for us to just keep dropping bombs on the same hole.
I think that there might be more than a few former service members that would disagree with that.
I claim little to no expertise here. Why would they disagree?
It certainly raises the degree of confidence....
True. I just meant that intel of any kind from the Israelis needs to be carefully considered and, if possible, independently verified before we do anything with it. I'm pro-Israel That doesn't keep me from recognizing that Israel is for Israel.
The reporter who started the “hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation” conspiracy authored this story, so you know exactly who he works for,
The story was not only authored by 6 NYT reporters but can also be found in a multitude of mainstream sources.
Even Trump didnt deny the existence of the report. He just called the person who leaked it a loser.
We should probably bomb them a couple more times then....
Trump has already said they were completely destroyed. Do you actually think he will walk that back?
Some are hooked on watching rubble bounce.
It wouldn't be the first time.
To my knowledge Trump has never admitted he was wrong about anything. At best, he might pretend that he never said this was the greatest military achievement ever, even though he is on video saying it.
Hardened concrete, trucks to move centrifuges out to a hiding spot, trucks to move the fissionable material to other locations...
Totally destroyed, only set back a few months.
It's all guesses, we won't know unless we can get down to the areas to view first hand to see the actual damage and if the equipment was still in there or not.
The only thing we know for sure is that the Iranian reports cannot be trusted, they lie even more than Trump does.
In the meantime, all sorts of "experts" will come out and tell us their take on it all. In this 24x7 news cycle and the constant need to be first in reporting anything, all sorts of shit gets tossed around. There's more than enough of this to satisfy all the diverse viewpoints.
This is the satellite photo everyone is talking about, you have to be a moron or a leftist media dumbass to think they are moving highly sensitive centrifuges or enriched uranium in open bed dump trucks, but it has been reported they were dumping dirt in the tunnels to limit damage due to bombs being dropped on them.
Sure, plug up the tunnels. But what does that actually limit in terms of a penetrating bomb that can move thru up to 200 feet beneath the ground before detonating. The shock wave from such an explosion will cause how much damage to the underground facilities? It's mentioned that the centrifuges are rather delicate devices that could have sustained severe damage from such a shock wave.
The only real point I was attempting to make is that we are weeks away from knowing the full extent, if we ever do. It all depends on how negotiations with Iran work out.
Trump is tripling and quadrupling down on the nuclear stuff being "obliterated". Quite a problem coming. What will he do when Netanyahu asks him to hit them again? Trump has already clearly said there is no need. Naturally he has no idea what he is talking about.
There is a vein of dark satire at play here.
Wait, Trump is bombastic in his descriptions of damage?
Wow, never knew he could do that. /s
Of course the leftist news is pushing that initial report heavily while disregarding part of the report where it said the report was 'low confidence'. We are weeks away from knowing the extent of the damage if ever. All we really know is that several of the high-ranking scientists were killed by Israel, we don't know who was in any of the sites that we bombed and the extent of deaths caused by the bombing. We also don't know the extent to damage to the 60% refined uranium. But it's a safe guess that the nuclear program has been greatly set back. Does it fully prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear bomb? No, of course not. That's where the next steps in negotiation come in.
I would love to see the current regime go away and be replaced by a new more democratic government, but that's up to the people of Iran to make that happen.
IMO you are absolutely correct. With all the lying and exaggeration being spread around and the biased news reports there is absolutely no way to know what the actual facts are. Iran has now banned IAEA from having anything to do with Iran's nuclear program, probably because it had exposed the Iran lies. I wouldn't trust the Iranian government with a fly swatter let alone a nuclear program.
What do you think the odds are for regime change? I'm doubtful that much will change inside of Iran as they have spent the last 53 years building their internal power. The Iranians pushing for change don't have a lot of power so I'm not hopeful that much will change. But all we can do out here is wait and see.
But IMO any future negotiations with Iran on the deal of this ceasefire need to ensure there are teeth to conditions so that if Iran again restricts or denies access to the IAEA there are immediate and harsh consequences.
Can you not see how pathetically accurate this statement is, and what it says about the potUS...?
While I agree with you, you are also ignoring the volume of lies from previous administrations. If we ever heard the "private" conversations of previous presidents, this narrative would be shaken. But they "acted" more presidential so it's accepted while Trump does not act as a lot of people think a president should act.
For myself, I'm happy to see the lying out in the open as it gives me a better opportunity to read between the lines.
Is Trump a serial and pathological liar, yes or no?
Exactly..............but most of the bad behavior was more than likely behind closed doors. In public, the perfect people.
I don't believe that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Both are issues but there are deeper issues between the two that cannot be handled with a simple yes or no.
Or for a somewhat deeper dive ...
Trump does exhibit some tendencies from both sides but I believe that most liars do. To be fair, aren't most politicians pathological liars in that they will lie to get elected, be rather manipulative in their lying and have a very thick skin and don't really care for the people. All they care about is winning their election.
IMO I don't know that Trump lies any more than any other president we've had, but he is much more out in the open with his lying. It also doesn't hurt that argument that we have a lot of "fact finders" who will take every statement as a lie (including keeping a counter of the lies) regardless on if the statement was a lie or simply an exaggeration, all while ignoring the lying from their side.
totally ridiculous. and you have wondered in the past why some people consider you a trumpster.
What's ridiculous is that we're supposed to believe that you have been involved in all the backroom and private discussions with other past presidents to know all the lies they told and are fair enough to make the comparison. As I said, Trump is upfront and out in the open with his lies, he doesn't attempt to present himself as a politician or president where past presidents have.
What's the difference between a lie told in public vs a lie told in public in a "presidential manner" and ignored or reversed in private meetings?
Based on your posting history, you can't wonder why some people consider you totally obsessed with Trump.
Iran will never give up its intention to build a nuclear bomb, no different from Hamas never giving up until the last militant is dead. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
The extremism in the assessments ignores the practical, middle ground - sand castles are easily ruined and if they make another one, it will be wrecked, too.
Trump said today that he no longer cares if he gets a deal with Iran to end their nuclear program because "we blew it all up".
I shit you not.