White House weighs in on leaker of preliminary assessment of Iran strikes

Those who leaked a preliminary assessment — rejected by the White House — on the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities will face justice for sharing the document, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. 

President Donald Trump and multiple leaders are saying that the strikes destroyed three Iranian nuclear sites.  

A leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency, published by CNN and the New York Times, cast doubt on that though, saying that the strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by several months. CNN first reported the assessment’s findings, citing seven people who were briefed on the report. The outlet reported the findings were based on a battle damage assessment from U.S. Central Command. 

Leavitt pushed back on the early assessment’s credibility, claiming the report was “flat-out wrong.” 

“Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,” Leavitt said in a Tuesday statement. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the FBI is conducting an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter and who shared the document with the media. 

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Additionally, Leavitt told reporters that leaking classified information is a criminal offense and that those who fail to follow the law “need to be held accountable for that crime.” 

“This administration wants to ensure that classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands, and that people who have the privilege of viewing this top secret classified information are being responsible with it,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday. 

“Clearly, someone who had their hands on this and it was a very few people, very few number of people in our government who saw this report,” Leavitt said. “That person was irresponsible with it. And we need to get to the bottom of it. And we need to strengthen that process to protect our national security and protect the American public.” 

Meanwhile, the U.S., Israel and Iran’s Foreign Ministry have all said that the three nuclear sites U.S. forces struck have encountered massive damage. 

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Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei told Al Jazeera Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities were “badly damaged,” and Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission said the U.S. strikes were “devastating.”

On Sunday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said that initial battle damage assessments suggest “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”

Trump issued a word of caution to Iran Wednesday, should it attempt to repair its nuclear program once more, and said the U.S. wouldn’t hesitate to launch another strike against Iran. 

Trump personally called for the firing of one of the reporters who authored the story about the initial assessment, claiming in a Wednesday Truth Social post that the reporter should be “IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog.’”

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Even so, CNN came to the defense of the reporter, Natasha Bertrand. 

“We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” CNN said in a Wednesday statement. “CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.