U.S. intelligence intercepts a conversation among Iranian officials suggesting that the attacks were less destructive than anticipated.

The newspaper The Washington Post reported this Sunday on the content of a “private” conversation intercepted by U.S. intelligence services between high-ranking Iranian officials. In it, the officials claim that the devastation from U.S. attacks on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend was less than expected.

Post reporters cite four anonymous sources, as well as the Administration’s response from Donald Trump, which, when asked by the newspaper, did not deny the existence of the report but downplayed its significance, claiming the U.S. government is “strongly in disagreement with [what the Iranians are saying]” in that conversation.

The preliminary report on Sunday adds to another published last week by U.S. media. In that case, it was a five-page document signed by a Pentagon agency, stating that the bombings on the facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan only managed to delay the Iranian nuclear program by a few months.

Both these preliminary conclusions and the recently revealed conversation among Tehran officials contradict Trump’s triumphant rhetoric, as he appeared from the White House on the night of June 21 (Washington time) to declare, just hours after the military operation dubbed Midnight Hammer had been successfully resolved, that both the three bases and the Iranian nuclear program had been “totally and completely obliterated.”

The Republican used the term “obliterated,” which means “to destroy without leaving any trace.” The word has become the most repeated since then in Washington, as part of an intense semantic debate.

The White House responded aggressively to the publication of the first report, the existence of which was also not denied by Trump’s Administration, although they considered it to be of little value because it is “too preliminary” and has been superseded by new Pentagon analyses. “[Those reporters] were able to say that the [preliminary] assessment spoke of damage ranging from moderate to severe, and preferred to focus on what suited their political agenda,” Trump protested on Wednesday during a press conference in The Hague (Netherlands), where he was attending a NATO summit.

Before heading to Europe, the U.S. president managed to establish a fragile ceasefire in the “12-Day War,” which both old enemies had been engaged in since June 13, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated a series of bombings under the still unproven pretext that Tehran is on the verge of obtaining an atomic bomb. The U.S. president linked that truce to the success of Saturday’s attacks.

Juicy Details

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared on Thursday at the Pentagon alongside Chief of Staff General Dan Caine. Caine was tasked with providing more information about the military operation, which, while full of juicy details, did not fully clarify the doubts regarding the actual damage from the bombings on the facilities and the nuclear program of the Ayatollah regime.

Hegseth focused on a politically charged speech and frequent attacks on the press, which he accused of being more concerned with denigrating Trump than celebrating American military glories. “Call it what you want: the facilities were destroyed, decimated, or obliterated,” said the Pentagon chief.

The leak from last week delayed a briefing with senators at the Capitol and caused the White House to threaten to change the rules on how classified information is shared with congress members (especially with Democrats). When the senators finally received the postponed reports, representatives from both parties agreed that they were insufficient to support Trump’s wording, who, for his part, has not backed down from using the word “obliterated.”

The president has also persistently attacked the media, even calling for the firing of the reporters who published the exclusives, insisting that airing information contradicting his enthusiasm is an attack against the soldiers who participated in the operation.

14 Bunker Busters

It was a complex 37-hour mission, since the B-2 bombers departed from a base in Missouri, loaded with, among other weaponry, 14 GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs, weighing 30,000 pounds and never before used in combat, intended to penetrate the Fordow facility, estimated to be buried at a depth of between 145 and 295 feet beneath the mountains south of Tehran. The mission involved 125 aircraft and the tomahawk missiles launched from submarines hit their targets.

Trump also denies another extreme from last week’s report, which stated that the Iranians had time to relocate much of their enriched uranium reserves, of the kind that would be used to manufacture a nuclear weapon, likely to other secret facilities across Iran, before the bombings.

The intercepted conversation revealed by the Post this Sunday also does not answer that question regarding an operation where experts estimate it will take weeks to obtain the full picture.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt reacted to the latest preliminary revelations with a message that emphasizes the idea that the Trump Administration intends to severely pursue those who pass sensitive intelligence contents to journalists: “It is shameful that the Washington Post helps people commit crimes by publishing out-of-context leaks. The idea that anonymous Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of meters of rubble is absurd. Their nuclear weapons program is over.”

Last week, the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission declared the destruction of the “critical infrastructure” of Fordow to be a given. And Rafael Grossi, director of the UN Atomic Energy Agency, stated on Thursday that “American and Israeli attacks caused enormous damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities.”