The United States intercepted a telephone conversation between two Iranian officials discussing US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, during the call the officials said that the strikes were less destructive than expected. This was reported by The Washington Post, citing four unnamed sources familiar with classified intelligence.
The White House did not deny the existence of the intercepted conversation, but disagreed with the Iranian officials’ conclusions and questioned their ability to assess the damage at the three nuclear sites targeted by the US operation.
“The idea that unnamed Iranian officials know what is going on under hundreds of feet of rubble is absurd. Their nuclear weapons programme is over,” White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence told the newspaper that “one piece of intelligence does not reflect the full intelligence picture.”
“A single phone call between unnamed Iranians is not the same as an intelligence assessment that considers the totality of evidence from multiple sources,” a senior US intelligence official said.
Earlier, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said Iran retained the technical capability to restore enriched uranium production and could restore it within months. According to him, Israeli and US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have caused serious but not fatal damage.
After the strikes by Israel and the US, President Donald Trump said the Iranian facilities had been completely destroyed. CNN and The New York Times sources previously reported that the attacks only temporarily halted the programme. According to the Financial Times, much of the highly enriched uranium stockpile remained intact.