WASHINGTON — The leak of a pair of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents describing recent satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike on Iran offers a window into the intense American concerns about Israel’s plans. It also has U.S. officials working to understand the size of the improper disclosure.
The two documents were prepared in recent days by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for analyzing images and information collected by American spy satellites. They began circulating Friday on the Telegram app and were being discussed by largely pro-Iran accounts.
The documents, which offer interpretations of satellite imagery, provide insight into a potential strike by Israel on Iran in the coming days. Such a strike has been anticipated in retaliation for an Iranian assault earlier this month, which was itself a response to an Israeli attack.
One of the documents is titled “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran,” and describes recent exercises that appeared to rehearse elements of such a strike. The second document details how Israel is shifting the placement of its missiles and weapons in case Iran responded with strikes of its own.
Officials were divided over the seriousness of the leak, which did not appear to reveal any new American capabilities. The documents describe but do not show the satellite images. If no further documents come to light, the damage would be limited, some of the officials say — besides revealing, once again, the degree to which the United States spies on one of its closest allies. Other officials say that any exposure of an ally’s war plans is a serious problem.
Officials privately acknowledged that the documents were authentic, although the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
The intelligence in the report may reflect only a slice of the information the United States has collected; cyberstrikes or sabotage on the ground in Iran would not be easily seen from American spy satellites. President Joe Biden was asked in Germany on Friday whether he knew when Israel planned to strike and what kind of targets it had chosen. “Yes and yes,” he said, declining to speak on the topic any further.
But his statement seemed to hint that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reached some kind of understanding about what kind of targets would be hit; previously, Biden called on Israel to avoid Iran’s nuclear sites and its energy facilities. The president has repeatedly raised concerns that if those targets, Iran’s crown jewels, were destroyed, the country would quickly escalate.
U.S. officials said that they did not know from where the documents had been taken, and that they were still hunting for the original source of the leak. But based on previous unauthorized releases, officials said it was most likely a lower-level government employee.
The documents describe satellite photos of an Israeli military exercise on Tuesday in preparation for a potential retaliatory strike on Iran. Part of the purpose of the exercise was to practice air-to-air refueling and search-and-rescue operations, according to the intelligence report. The exercise involved a force of a similar size to what Israel used in a strike on Yemen on Sept. 29, the report said.
The documents also discuss Israeli preparations of long-range, air-launched ballistic missiles; air-to-surface missiles; air refueling planes; and other support aircraft. The documents also say Israel was conducting covert surveillance on Iran with drones.
But the officials said the documents were not a comprehensive assessment of what the United States knows about Israeli intentions. The documents, which are dated Oct. 15, represent only what analysts looking at satellite imagery could determine at that time.
Military and intelligence officials are still stung from the exposure of a large trove of classified material on a range of subjects that first appeared on a Discord server two years ago, and were made public in April 2023. An Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, pleaded guilty to six counts of violating the Espionage Act for the release of the material, in exchange for a prison sentence of about 16 years.
Teixeira began by posting summaries of intelligence reports on the Discord server, but went on to share photographs of entire documents he had printed out — a far more dangerous breach, officials said.
While the U.S. government has not made public a broad damage assessment, Teixeira’s release of the documents exposed how deeply the United States had penetrated Russian military commands and intelligence agencies. It also exposed U.S. collection on Ukraine, China and a variety of other countries.
It is unclear how many sources of information were cut off as a result of Teixeira’s postings on Discord, but U.S. officials said some intelligence collection was badly compromised.
If the latest leak is confined to a pair of satellite documents, it will be far less damaging. But the Discord leak started with a few documents, only to see dozens and dozens of pages come to light.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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