Israeli intelligence rejects Netanyahu's request to back claim Iran's nuclear program was completely destroyed: Report

Israel's intelligence agencies rejected a request from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office to endorse the government's claim that Iran's nuclear program had been "completely" destroyed, Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported Saturday.

According to the newspaper, Netanyahu's office pressured security, intelligence and military officials to issue an assessment stating that Iran's nuclear facilities had been completely destroyed, reinforcing a claim made by US President Donald Trump following US strikes on Iran in June 2025.

The confrontation reportedly took place hours after the end of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

From June 13 to June 24, 2025, Israel, with US backing, carried out a military campaign against Iran targeting military infrastructure, missile launch sites and nuclear facilities, while also assassinating senior military commanders and nuclear scientists.

Iran responded by launching more than 550 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israeli military and intelligence sites.

The newspaper said Trump was the first to claim Iran's nuclear program had been destroyed. Netanyahu later declared that two "existential threats" to Israel. Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missiles. had been eliminated.

"There was one small problem with that statement. It simply wasn't true," the newspaper said, adding that the extent of the damage could not yet be accurately assessed.

"No intelligence official exercising a reasonable degree of professionalism believed that Iran's nuclear program had been eliminated," the report said.

According to the newspaper, Netanyahu's office then intensified pressure on the security establishment, military and intelligence agencies to produce an assessment confirming the facilities had been destroyed.

Israel's preliminary assessments, based on satellite imagery, drone surveillance and other intelligence, concluded that the damage was "significant, but not complete, and certainly did not amount to total destruction," it said.

A senior intelligence official reportedly refused to sign the requested assessment, telling his superior: "I cannot sign this."

The official argued that intelligence agencies lacked sufficient information to determine the full extent of the damage and warned that endorsing an inaccurate assessment would undermine their professional credibility.

According to the report, the White House sought evidence to counter an internal Pentagon assessment, first reported by The New York Times, that concluded the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities was far from decisive.

The newspaper said Netanyahu's office then sought support from Israeli institutions to reinforce the US position.

Brig. Gen. Moshe Edri, director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, agreed to help draft a document but sought approval from the commission's senior scientists, it said.

According to a source cited by the newspaper, the scientists initially refused to sign what they described as a "heavily distorted" document, rejecting language claiming the Fordow enrichment facility had been rendered unusable and Iran's nuclear capabilities had been pushed back by many years.

A compromise wording was later reached stating that the US strike had destroyed critical infrastructure at Fordow and rendered its enrichment facility inoperable, while assessing that the combined US and Israeli strikes had set Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon back by many years.

Yedioth Ahronoth said the document stopped short of endorsing Trump's assertion that all three nuclear sites had been completely destroyed but supported the broader assessment that the military operation had achieved long-term strategic gains.

The newspaper added that Israeli scientists insisted on including a final caveat stating that those gains would endure only if Iran was prevented from regaining access to nuclear material.

According to the report, the scientists maintained that Iran's remaining stockpile of about 440 kilograms of fissile material, enough to produce about 11 nuclear weapons, excluding uranium enriched to 20%, meant it could not be claimed that the country's nuclear program had been destroyed.

Neither Netanyahu's office nor Israeli intelligence agencies immediately commented on the report.