US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has hit out at the leak of classified US intelligence that suggested damage done by Saturday’s US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites was limited, calling the sources “treasonous” in an interview with Fox News Tuesday night.
Seven people briefed on an early US intelligence assessment told CNN that Iran’s nuclear program had only been set back a few months by the US attack, despite the use of 14 huge “bunker buster” bombs in the raid.
US analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available.
Speaking to Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham Tuesday, Steve Witkoff said “it goes without saying that the leaking of that sort of information, whatever the information, whatever site it goes out on, is outrageous, it is treasonous.”
“So it ought to be investigated and whoever did it, whoever is responsible for it should be held accountable.”
Speaking to CNN for the exclusive report, two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed.
One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.
Trump on Tuesday dismissed the report as “fake news,” while Witkoff, speaking to Fox, called it “completely preposterous.”
“There is no doubt that it [Iran’s nuclear capability] was obliterated. So the reporting out there that in some ways suggests that we didn’t achieve the objective is just completely preposterous,” he said.
