Update: CNN's Big "Scoop" Came from... Iranian Sources Passing Iranian State Propaganda

Outstanding work, CNN.

Make sure you all hand out awards to each other.

Adam Kredo of the Free Beacon:

The top-secret Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that claimed Iran's nuclear sites suffered only moderate damage likely relied on faulty information from deceitful Iranian sources, according to several former U.S. intelligence officers, one of whom described the document as so unreliable "you can wipe your ass with it."

...

The U.S. intelligence community deemed that initial assessment "low-confidence," a fact CNN omitted from its original piece, and based it solely on satellite imagery and intercepted communications--known as signals intelligence, or SIGINT--from Iranian officials. Shortly after the assessment leaked, Axios reported that communications intercepted by Israel "suggest Iranian military officials have been giving false situation reports to the country's political leadership--downplaying the extent of the damage." Such communications likely made their way into the DIA report, according to three former U.S. intelligence operatives, a current U.S. official, and other veteran national security insiders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon both on and off the record. Some of them referred to the DIA as the "discount intelligence agency."

LOL.

"It's basically messaging by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], messaging by Tehran," said Michael Pregent, a former intelligence officer with U.S. Central Command who operated in the Middle East for nearly 30 years. "DIA is taking a SIGINT report from the National Security Agency ... and putting together an assessment to leak. I know it's messaging, the Iranians know it's messaging, and for some reason, NSA believes it's actual f--ing intelligence."

A current U.S. official familiar with the ongoing damage assessment process said that the DIA's findings--as well as "the partisan hit job published by CNN"--have been "completely debunked" over the past 24 hours, including by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"It has now been established by the IAEA that Iran's nuclear program suffered 'enormous damage' and the 'centrifuges ... are completely destroyed,'" the official told the Free Beacon. "The military operation carried out by the United States was a huge success and we are grateful to our troops who valiantly carried out the president's mission."

In addition to the IAEA, Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe announced that the CIA learned from "an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years."

...

The former intelligence officer said that the DIA's categorization of its own assessment renders it effectively useless.

"The fact that the DIA's assessment was deemed 'low-confidence' means that you can wipe your ass with it," the source added. "You probably get more information from a Free Beacon article."

Wait, what? This is appearing in the Free Beacon.

A third former U.S. official who worked primarily on the Iran portfolio agreed that the initial DIA report included "Iranians repeating propaganda to each other, as they have done throughout the war and preceding preparations."

...

Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser, noted that DIA analysts' reliance on intercepted communications has been a longstanding concern.

"There's a long pattern within the DIA in which analysts listen so much to their targets that they actually start to rationalize, if not believe them," said Rubin, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "This is why so many DIA Middle East analysts become outspoken conspiracy theorists or advocates for normalizing ties with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Too much Iran leads to becoming analytically--if not morally--unhinged."

The leak itself, Rubin said, likely came from a DIA agent who "wanted to write the first draft of history because he or she knew the assessment would likely be challenged."

This thread examines the likely damage to all five parts of Iran's nuke/ICBM research.

Dmitri Alperovitch @DAlperovitch

First part - the weaponization research suffered very heavy blows. Hard to estimate how much because it was always covert and unaccounted for but numerous key scientists have been killed and Parchin, where much of this work had been done, was hit multiple times.

Thus, even if Iran had all the ingredients for a bomb today, it would likely take it some months before it could be assembled and put on a missile.

Second part - enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz were hit by US Massive Ordinance Penetrators (and Israeli strikes at Natanz before that).

While the facility at Fordow may or may not be recoverable, the sensitive centrifuges inside almost certainly suffered heavy damage.

Thus, it is unlikely that Iran can use these facilities to enrich in the coming months.

BUT Iran announced right before the war that it had built a new secret enrichment facility that it refused to disclose.

Thus, if Iran already has centrifuges deployed at this new facility or can deploy new ones there quickly, it can once again start enriching *existing* uranium gas fairly quickly.

Third part - centrifuge manufacturing facilities. The Isfahan facility was destroyed but the largest one at Natanz is buried so deep in the mountain that even MOPs can't destroy it. It was not hit in this war.

It's hard to say how much of the supply chain for this Natanz centrifuge manufacturing facility was targeted but it's likely that Iran can still produce centrifuges or can resume that production relatively quickly at Natanz.

Fourth part - auxiliary facilities for conversion of uranium. Those all have been destroyed.

So IF Iran has to start enrichment from scratch using their new secret facility, it will still likely take a year or more to rebuild those plants and enrich uranium up to 90%.

Fifth part - IAEA said that before the war, Iran had accumulated the stockpile of 408kg of 60% enriched uranium that was likely stored in the tunnels at Isfahan.

The reason this is key is that this material can be enriched within a few weeks to 90% - enough for ~9 bombs.

Israelis apparently believe this material was not moved and is buried at Isfahan (tunnel entrances had been hit) and that it may or may not be recoverable.

Either Trump or Hegseth let it slip that they had been told by Mossad agents on the ground at these facilities that they had been rekt.

posted by Ace at 06:33 PM

| Access Comments