Jeffrey Lewis
A bald man in camouflage military fatigues reaches up to remove a poster board from a display easel. The poster is covered in various maps and diagrams of a nuclear facility in Iran. Bits of other people can be seen as they bustle around in the foreground.A poster of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is removed following a news conference at the Pentagon in the U.S. state of Virginia on June 26. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
June 27, 2025, 10:50 AM
I’ve spent the past several days telling incredulous reporters that Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran, even with help from the United States, looked anemic—and that it would, at best, set Iran’s nuclear program back by several months, maybe a year if we were lucky.
Now CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, and even a sweating Fox News are reporting on the conclusions of a five-page classified assessment of the strikes that was prepared by the United States’ Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It turns out that I may have been overestimating the effectiveness of the bombing campaign.
That report indicated that the strike has set Iran’s nuclear program back by one to two months on the low end and less than a year on the high end. (The CIA estimate that it would take Iran “years” to rebuild the facilities that were destroyed is beside the point, since no one thinks Iran will do that.)
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