Politics
JUST IN: FBI Launches Hunt For Leakers Of Iran Report: ‘Flawless Mission’
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the FBI is launching an internal investigation to determine the identity of the individual who leaked a classified document assessing the impact of U.S. bombs on Iran to the media.
On Tuesday, CNN reported on a preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluding that the use of 14 “bunker buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites set the country’s program back by just a few months. The White House quickly disputed the characterization, saying the estimation was a worst-case scenario and promising swift retribution for the leaker.
The Pentagon, in conjunction with the FBI, will be probing who had access to a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, its intelligence arm, Hegseth told reporters.
“When you talk to people who built the bombs, understand what those bombs can do and deliver those bombs, they landed precisely where they were supposed to,” Hegseth said.
“So it was a flawless mission … Any assessment that tells you something otherwise is speculating with other motives. And we know that because when you actually look at the report — by the way, it was a top secret report — it was preliminary, it was low confidence. All right. … And we believe far more likely severe and obliterated. So this is a political motive here.”
“Of course, we’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes. Battle damage assessments,” Hegseth added. “And CNN and others are trying to spin it to make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.”
His contradiction of CNN’s report was echoed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who slammed the “anonymous, low-level loser” who leaked the document.
“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 wrote on X.
“Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”
The intelligence assessment is at odds with another by the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, which said the U.S. strike on Iran’s underground Fordow facility “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable,” CNN reported.
Israeli officials also told the outlet that they believe the combination of U.S. and Israeli bombs set the Iranian nuclear program back by at least two years, assuming they are able to build unimpeded — a possibility that Israel says it will not allow.
“To rebuild a program like that,” Former IDF General Amir Avivi said, “it’s hundreds of billions of dollars, which this regime doesn’t have.”
Speaking at a NATO summit, President Donald Trump extolled the success of the U.S. operation and was likewise praised by the organization’s chair, who told the president in a private text message that he accomplished “something no one else dared to do.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Politico that the U.S. is “not looking for a war with Iran.”
“We basically flew … halfway across the world, dropped these weapons on three key sites, pulled away and we were done. It showed a tremendous amount of strategic patience by the president to do that. He clearly defined the goal, he delivered on it in the limited way that he had defined it, and then we moved on,” Rubio said.
