Trump administration challenged initial damage assessment for Iran strike

Leaked defense intelligence agency report raises suspicion of president Donald TrumpClaiming that the recent U.S. air strikes “completely, completely destroy” three Iranian nuclear facilities, it concluded that the mission had withdrawn Iran’s plans just a few months ago.

The report, published by CNN and the New York Times, comes days after Trump approved a strike that saw tensions between Israel and Iran increase. In a national speech delivered immediately after the action, Trump declared that the sites were “completely eliminated.”

Despite a new war launched by members of the Trump administration to discredit the initial Pentagon Defense Intelligence Agency report, several experts told Fox News figures that there is too little information available at present to accurately determine how much damage the strike caused.

They say it is complicated and time-consuming to piece together thorough intelligence assessments.

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Dan Shapiro, who previously served as deputy defense secretary for the Middle East and U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he did not invest much stock in an overly pessimistic or overly optimistic assessment and said it would soon appear, saying that the preliminary assessment from the DIA is likely to be based solely on satellite imagery.

Shapiro, a senior researcher at the Atlantic Commission, told Fox News Digital. “You really need to test all other intelligence streams, from signal intelligence, human intelligence, other forms of surveillance scenes, which may be accessed by IAEA inspectors, which may require access from others. So it takes days to weeks to get a real assessment.”

“But I think if the ammunition is carried out as expected, it will cause significant damage and will greatly withdraw the plan,” Shapiro said.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that the initial combat damage assessment indicated “extremely severe damage and damage were suffered at all three locations,” but admitted that the final assessment would “take some time.”

Nevertheless, media reports based on the DIA report paint a different picture, with CNN’s report on the initial report saying that Iran did not destroy Iran’s hiding during the strike, citing seven people who have already introduced the report. According to CNN, the findings are based on a combat damage assessment by the U.S. Central Command.

Other members of the Trump administration, including the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Subsequently, the conclusions of the DIA report were withdrawn, claiming that the report was marked as “lower confidence.”

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke at a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington on Thursday, June 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

According to experts, the term is often used when marking the initial evaluation, meaning the conclusion is based on limited data.

Retired Navy descendant Mark Montgomery, who served as a director of transnational threats for former National Security Council President Bill Clinton, said low confidence descriptions are often used in early assessments.

“Low confidence means analysts are uncertain about the accuracy of the assessment,” Montgomery said, who is now a senior fellow at the Washington think tank and is the foundation for defending a democracy. “This is common when looking quickly in a 24-hour assessment like this.”

Montgomery colleague Craig Singleton, who is also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defending Democratic Countries, said low confidence labels are used to be scarce and warn policy makers for additional information.

“The most important thing is that when the key facts have not been verified, a low confidence assessment is often issued, which certainly applies in this case,” Singleton said.

Rob Greenway, former deputy assistant to the president of the Trump National Security Council, told Fox News Digital that it will take one or two months to get a higher confidence assessment.

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U.S. President Donald Trump met with Vice President JD Vance in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2025. (via Reuters’ White House/Handout)

Greenway also said the strike was designed to cause underground damage, which would complicate the assessment of damage because it was not immediately available and requires multiple sources of intelligence, such as signals or human intelligence, to draw conclusions.

Greenway said Israel had also launched strikes against these locations, which added a network of analyticals that must be evaluated.

“Each of them is a bigger puzzle, and you’re trying to evaluate the final effect of the whole puzzle, not just a special strike,” Greenway said. “All of this means it takes time to do it.”

Even so, Greenway said the number of ordnance at these locations has dropped, including more than 1430,000 pounds. Bomb – means that the target facility has been severely damaged and is therefore no longer available.

“We invested twice the amount of ordnance needed to achieve the desired effect just to make sure we don’t have to go back,” Greenway said.

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President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio (R) sits in the situation room as they monitor the mission of withdrawing three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites on June 21, 2025 at the White House in Washington, DC (Daniel Torok/White House via Getty Image)

“There is almost no mathematical probability that Iran can once again use any kind of facility for intended purposes (if any), which again means that everything is within the scope of Israel’s capabilities right now,” Greenway said.

Michael Allen, former senior director of the National Security Council of George W. Bush administration, said that even the final verdict of the intelligence community will not be ready anytime soon, intelligence portraits will become more “rich” in the coming days.

Allen told Fox News Digital Digital, who Allen told Fox News Digital.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt Tell reporters that few people have access to the report because the FBI investigates people who share the document with the press and those who leak it to the media will be held responsible.

“That person is irresponsible for that,” Levitt told reporters Thursday. “And we need to reach the bottom. We need to strengthen this process to protect our national security and protect the American public.”