Spoke too soon? Preliminary US intel report ridicules Trump's 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear programme claims

US President Donald Trump's ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were bold, and the visuals were dramatic, but it turns out the early assessment is far less than explosive. A leaked preliminary, classified report from the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, Pentagon's intelligence arm, suggests that the recent American bombing campaign on Iran's nuclear facilities — touted by President Donald Trump as a mission that "obliterated" Tehran's capabilities — has in fact only set the programme back by a few months.

What damage did the US do?

According to the New York Times report, entrances to two key sites were sealed, but the fortified underground complexes themselves — at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — remain structurally intact. Based on the battle damage assessment conducted by the US Central Command in the aftermath of the strikes, it concluded that while the mission disrupted operations, it didn't collapse the core infrastructure.

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Trump's version vs reality

While President Trump was quick to declare a resounding victory, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been more careful in describing the attack’s effects. At a press conference on Sunday, a day after the strikes, he said that the "operation was designed to severely degrade Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure".

He said that while the final damage assessment was to come, initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites "sustained severe damage and destruction". However, he stopped short of saying that the mission "obliterated" nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile soon after the strikes, at a late night address to the public, Trump called the strikes a 'spectacular military success,' and said that “Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

Labelling Tehran the world's number one state sponsor of terror, Trump said that the US's objective with these strikes was the "destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat" posed by the nation.

“We took the bomb right out of their hands,” he said, referring to Iran’s enriched uranium program. “Total obliteration,” he claimed. However, intel reports paint a murkier picture. Earlier, as per US estimation, Iran was just three months away from making a bomb; now, as per the assessment, Tehran's nuclear timeline has been delayed by as little as three months.