US senators, including Chris Murphy, have said Iran's nuclear programme was not destroyed by the strikes, despite claims by the Trump administration.
The United States has obtained intercepted conversations of senior Iranian officials discussing Washington's recent strikes on Iran's nuclear program, which four sources familiar with classified intelligence say indicate the attacks had a smaller impact than Tehran expected.
The Washington Post writes about this.
Iranian officials have privately discussed why the strikes authorized by President Donald Trump were less destructive than expected. The intercepted intelligence adds to a larger picture of the aftermath of an operation Trump described as having “completely and utterly destroyed” Iran's nuclear program.
The White House did not deny the existence of the intercepted communications, but questioned their veracity. Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt said “the idea that anonymous Iranian officials could know exactly what happened under hundreds of tons of rubble is preposterous,” adding, “Their nuclear weapons program is over.”
Analysts acknowledge that the strikes were large-scale, using 30,000-pound bunker busters and Tomahawk cruise missiles that caused significant damage to facilities in Fordow, Natanga and Isfahan. At the same time, experts continue to debate the real level of destruction: according to some reports, Iran managed to move its stockpiles of enriched uranium, and underground facilities were not completely destroyed, although they were blocked.
A Trump administration official said in a comment that the Iranian assessments were wrong: “We know our strikes were on target and had the effect we were looking for.” He said the metal processing plant had been destroyed and would take years to repair.
In closed briefings to Congress, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said several key sites had been completely destroyed, including intelligence estimates that most of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles were likely buried under the rubble at Fordow and Isfahan.
A senior US intelligence official told The Washington Post that “one phone call between unnamed Iranians is not an intelligence assessment,” which must be based on a combination of evidence from multiple sources.
Signals intelligence—intercepted phone calls, emails, and other digital data—is a key source of the president’s daily briefings. But even it is not infallible: conversations taken out of context require additional verification and reconciliation with other types of information.
Amid the criticism, Trump was unhappy with media coverage of the strikes, which he said did not live up to claims about the effectiveness of the bombings that preceded the cease-fire agreements between Iran and Israel.
Inside the Strikes' Impact Debate: Trump, Military, Critics Differ in Assessments
President Donald Trump has responded sharply to criticism of the effectiveness of US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, saying it was Democrats who “leaked the information” and should be “held accountable.” Writing in Truth Social, he cited a Defense Intelligence Agency report that said the strikes set back Iran's nuclear program by months, not years.
In a pre-recorded interview with Fox News scheduled to air Sunday, Trump cast doubt on the report of the uranium stockpile being moved: “I don't think they did that, no. It's very difficult to do, very dangerous… They didn't know we were coming at that point.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency's initial findings were based on information available in the first 24 hours after the strikes. The report said some of Iran's centrifuges, used to enrich uranium, were undamaged. But it also included a caveat: a full assessment of the impact on the facilities would take days or even weeks.
Even so, Trump administration officials have already concluded that the Iranian program has been significantly destroyed. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the president had “led the most complex and covert military operation in history,” which he called a “stunning success.”
But the closed-door briefings left Congress divided. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told reporters: “I leave this briefing still believing that we have not destroyed the program. The president was deliberately misleading the public when he said the program had been destroyed.” He said Iran's nuclear infrastructure was still partially intact: “You can't bomb away the knowledge. There are still people in Iran who know how to operate centrifuges, and if there is enriched uranium left, you are shutting down the program for months, not years.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, agreed that “destruction” was the right word to describe the strikes, though he acknowledged that Iran's capabilities could be rebuilt. “I don't want people to think that the problem is solved, because it is not,” he said.
One of the American intelligence officials reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe noted at a briefing that Israeli forces had previously destroyed Iran's air defense system, and the likelihood of quickly restoring the facilities was very low.
IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi gave a mixed assessment to CBS News, saying Iran's nuclear program had been “very seriously damaged” but that some of the infrastructure remained intact. “Iran had and has some capacity to process, convert and enrich uranium,” he said.
Critics of Trump's decision point out that the use of force has undermined prospects for a diplomatic settlement that could have led to a strict inspections regime, and risks Tehran accelerating its nuclear program as a means of defending itself against possible U.S. or Israeli regime change efforts.
U.S. officials said that before the strikes, U.S. intelligence concluded that Iran had not yet decided to build a nuclear weapon but was considering ways to speed up the process if it did.
Administration officials insist that military action does not rule out a diplomatic option, and could actually improve the chances of a deal. On June 26, Trump announced that talks between U.S. and Iranian officials would take place this week. However, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi quickly denied any plans for a meeting.
