The head of Mossad hailed Israel’s ‘historic’ success in Iran in a rare public statement from the top-secret intelligence agency.
In a video, the agency’s chief David Barnea said the ‘longstanding threat’ from Tehran is now ‘significantly’ neutralised.
Addressing agents at their command center, he said: ‘We will continue to keep a close watch on all the projects in Iran, which we know very well.
‘And we will be there, just as we have been there until now.’
Barnea also expressed appreciation for ‘our key partner, the CIA’, and thanked his own agents for their work ‘over many months and even years’ doing ‘all of the right actions to get to the one right moment’.
Later, Israel’s military chief Eyal Zamir said the army had assessed the damage to Iran’s nuclear programme as ‘systemic’ rather than ‘localized’.
He said: ‘We hit the main facilities, factories, industries and knowledge centers.
‘The cumulative achievement allows us to determine that the Iranian nuclear project suffered severe, broad and deep damage and was set back years.’
Donald Trump has been commenting on the strikes from Air Force One on his way back from the NATO summit.
Reports have claimed leaked intelligence suggested Tehran’s nuclear programme had only been set back by months.
This would means the Islamic Republic could restart its work in a matter of months, according to sources.
In one Truth Social post he wrote: ‘Israel just stated that the Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED! Thank you to our great B-2 pilots, and all others involved!’
He accused a journalist in another of ‘attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit “pay dirt” — TOTAL OBLITERATION!’.
More than a dozen bombs were unleashed on two of the nuclear facilities, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment plant and the Natanz Enrichment Complex, in Iran.
The classified assessment is at odds with the statements of both Trump and high-ranking US officials – including defence secretary Pete Hegseth.
Both have said the weekend strikes essentially eliminated Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump’s administration on Tuesday told the UN Security Council that its strikes had ‘degraded’ Iran’s nuclear programme, short of Trump’s earlier assertion that the facilities had been ‘obliterated.’
Asked for comment, the White House pointed to a statement by Karoline Leavitt in which she slammed the ‘alleged’ conclusion and said it was ‘flat-out wrong.’
She said: ‘Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.’
Trump also announced that US and Iranian officials will talk next week, giving rise to cautious hope for longer-term peace even as Tehran insists it will not give up its nuclear program.
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