West Asia crisis: US investigating leaked classified documents on Israel's plans to attack Iran, says report
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The Joe Biden-led United States (US) administration is investigating an unauthorised release of classified documents that assess Israel's plans to attack Iran, the news agency Associated Press reported on Sunday (Oct 20) citing three American officials.
A fourth official confirmed that the documents appeared to be legitimate. The report said that the classified documents were attributed to the USGeospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.
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The documents noted that Israel continued to move military assets in place to carry out a military strike in response to Iran's massive missile attack (on Israel) on October 1.
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The documents were top secret andwere posted online to Telegram and first reported by CNN and Axios.
One of the four American officials told the Associated Press that the Biden administration was also investigating how these documents were obtained, includingwhether it was an intentional leak by a member of the USintelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack — and whether any other intelligence information was compromised.
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As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official added.
'Anyone who knows when Israel will attack Iran should be...'
The unclassified release of these documents came as Iranian Foreign Minister AbbasAraqchi said on Saturday that anyone who knew how and when Israel would attack Iran should be held accountable.
"Anybody with knowledge or understanding of 'how and when Israel was going to attackIran', and/or providing the means and backing for such folly, should logically be held accountable for any possible causality," Foreign Minister Araqchi said in a post on the social media platform X.
Araqchi's comments came a day after US President Joe Bidensaidthere was an opportunity to deal with Israel andIranin a way that potentially ends their conflict in West Asia for a while.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a visit to Berlin, Biden also said he had an understanding of how and when Israel was going to retaliate against missile attacks byIran. He declined to elaborate.
(With inputs from agencies)