The Inconvenient DIA Report: A Predictable Truth Meets a Political Meltdown

Intelligence professionals said all along a single strike wouldn’t destroy Iran’s program. They were right. That may be the real problem.

Yesterday morning, when I decided to post an update on what was then known about the damage from the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, it was still several hours before the now-infamous DIA report leaked. My analysis was based on open-source reporting—Maxar satellite imagery, commentary from independent analysts, and the latest LIDAR, seismic, and infrared data. I hesitated at first, unsure whether the post was still necessary. Two days earlier, it had already become clear that claims of “obliteration” were exaggerated. And by then, the headlines had moved on—to the ceasefire, Trump’s F-bomb, the broader optics of escalation. No one seemed focused on the bomb damage assessment anymore.

Still, I thought: we have new technical data that further confirms what experts predicted before the strike, and what early imagery already suggested. It seemed worth closing the loop. My post wasn’t meant to break news—it was a follow-up to my earlier report that “obliteration” hadn’t happened. This was just a more detailed snapshot of what we knew 48 hours later. It wasn’t explosive. It wasn’t surprising. And in a way, that was the point. Everything we were seeing—satellite imagery, LIDAR scans, thermal mapping—lined up with pre-strike expectations. The program hadn’t been destroyed. It had been disrupted. Delayed.

Then came the DIA leak—confirming all of that—but triggering a firestorm of political pushback from the Trump team.

The Trumpworld Eruption

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, quickly dismissed the report as “flat-out wrong” and the report’s authors as “low-level losers” and “globalist saboteurs.” Pete Hegseth took to Fox to mock the Defense Intelligence Agency as “deep state pencil-pushers” who couldn’t be trusted to assess anything correctly. He also stated: ““Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it all — our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons.” (Note the subtle shift to “obliterated…ability to create” as opposed to simply obliterated the facility. )

Then, by morning, Trump himself took to X and Truth Social with an all-caps denunciation:

“FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED. BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC.”

Notably, he didn’t reference the Defense Intelligence Agency directly by name, but the implication was clear: anyone suggesting the strike had not been fully successful was part of the "fake news" conspiracy. The intelligence assessment didn’t contradict his political goals—it contradicted his declared reality. That alone made it, in his view, an attack. It reveals the extent to which intelligence itself is treated not as guidance, but as a threat to be neutralized.

This leaves me wondering — why are they reacting this wildly to what is bascially a confirmation of what analysts have been saying forever about the prospects of a single bombing assault on the facilities?

Did Team Trump actually expect a single strike to knock out Iran’s nuclear program?

As noted above — prior to the bombing, longstanding analysis had been clear that a single bombing mission would be unlikely to destroy Iran’s capabilities. Reuters, two months before the strike, bluntly warned that “military strikes by the U.S. or Israel are unlikely to permanently dismantle Iran’s nuclear programme, though they could cause temporary setbacks” source. Similarly, The Cipher Brief noted that “even with bunker-busting weapons… air power cannot permanently dismantle a hardened and decentralized nuclear program.”

There was broad consensus that Iran’s most sensitive facilities—particularly Fordow—were buried deep enough that even the Massive Ordnance Penetrator might not reach them. As The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emphasized in a pre-strike analysis, Iran had learned from past Israeli sabotage attempts. They moved operations deep underground, diversified, and built in redundancy. Destroying the enrichment program outright, they said, “would require a sustained, multi-phase campaign, not a single night of strikes.”

This wasn’t pessimism. It was realism. So when the strike happened and didn’t result in total destruction, it wasn’t a surprise. It was the baseline expectation.

Then the strike happened—and we saw exactly what was predicted

Initially satellite imagery suggested there had not been complete destruction, and then there was thermal drone imagery and LIDAR mapping, which showed damage to surface infrastructure and sealed tunnel entrances—but no evidence of large-scale internal collapse. No radiation leaks were detected. No cratered centrifuge halls.

CENTCOM’s initial assessment confirmed that most of Iran’s enrichment capacity was likely intact and recoverable. This was incorporaed into the DIA report, which crystallized the findings: “3–5 months delay under optimal conditions.” Not nothing—but certainly not decisive.

So now we had a full alignment: expert warnings before the strike → observable post-strike data → intelligence confirmation.

And yet, what might have been a quiet validation of long-understood limits on military power turned into something else entirely.

What did Trump think was going to happen?

There are three plausible explanations:

First—and most likely—he was told the truth—and ignored it. If the intelligence community gave him the standard caveats—that the strike would damage, not destroy—and he chose to emphasize spectacle over substance, then this would be consistent with a well-established pattern in his leadership style: prioritizing strong visual messaging and public perception over technical or operational nuance. In that framework, dissenting analysis isn’t just unwelcome—it’s viewed as disruptive to the intended narrative.

Second, he may have been misled. If someone in the chain told him this would “cripple” Iran’s program, or claimed it would set them back “years” without real basis, then there’s a breakdown inside the national security apparatus. That’s a deeper and more troubling failure—because it suggests that either the intelligence was politicized, or dissenting analysis was buried.

Third—and perhaps most likely—he didn’t much care what the intelligence said. What mattered was the strike itself: the boom, the footage, the flag-draped announcements. For Trump, foreign policy is often performance. If the mission looked strong, then it was strong. If analysts said otherwise, they were the problem.

That’s not a quirk. It’s a worldview. In that worldview, feedback is threat. Intelligence is useful only insofar as it supports the narrative.

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So what’s actually at stake here?

Battle damage assessment isn’t just an internal memo. It’s how militaries learn. It tells you what worked, what didn’t, and what to do next. Undermining that process—vilifying the analysts, demanding they be silenced or punished—not only erodes internal trust, it breaks the system’s ability to improve.

Of course, this isn’t new for Trump. We’ve seen it before: with COVID data, hurricane forecasts, election counts. But this case feels a little different. Because it doesn’t just implicate a domestic narrative. It implicates war and peace, strategic stability, and the limits of force.

The idea that a leaked DIA assessment could provoke this level of backlash—not because it revealed a secret, but because it reaffirmed what everyone already knew—is a warning. Not about Iran. But about us.

The real question isn’t about Fordow. It’s about feedback.

If Trump was told the likely outcome and chose to pretend otherwise, then the outrage we’re seeing now is performance—designed to keep the narrative intact. But if he wasn’t told—or wasn’t willing to hear—it raises serious questions about how decisions are made and sold in Trump’s America.

And if future military operations are designed to look strong rather than be effective, we’ll all be living in a country where, for the government at least, truth is optional—but the consequences aren’t. Actually we’re already living there.

The question then becomes, what to do about it if you’re part of the system. How does an intelligence professional operating within this truth-warped ecosystem maintain equilibrium and professional and personal credibility? Do you just keep cranking out the truth and let the fallout happen? Or do you begin to shade the truth, even reconstruct it, to meet the political agenda?

I have substantial confidence in the professionalism of the intelligence professionals across the Intelligence Community. But I don’t envy them the dilemma they are in. I hope they can hold the line.