Highly Classified US Intelligence Leaked, Documents Reveal Israel’s Plans To Attack Iran
SOURCE: REUTERS#UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Iran #Israel pic.twitter.com/JVrsNZWJud
— News18 (@CNNnews18) October 20, 2024
🇺🇸❗ Speaker Mike Johnson on Isreal: “The leak is very concerning.”
The Biden administration deliberately leaked intelligence documents, revealing the nature and date of the Israeli attack on Iran – CNN report pic.twitter.com/L3t1zWpHvF
— OSINT Expert (@OsintExperts) October 20, 2024
This was going around last week and I didn’t bother to report on it because it seemed too silly to be real.
They got me.
The US government is investigating an unauthorised release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran.
The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union programme on Sunday, saying the leak was very concerning.
“There’s some serious allegations being made there,” the Republican from Louisiana said. “The investigation’s under way, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours.”
A US official told the Associated Press the documents in question appeared to be legitimate, but the Guardian was not immediately able to verify their authenticity.
The documents are attributed to the US Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. They are written in a style similar to documents previously leaked from the Pentagon, using classifications familiar to the national security community.
The first document has the title “Israel: air force continues preparations for strike on Iran and conducts a second large-force employment exercise” and the second “Israel: defense forces continue key munitions preparations and covert UAV activity almost certainly for a strike on Iran”. Both are dated 16 October and were first leaked a day later.
In general terms, they note that Israel was still positioning military assets as of the middle of last week to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on 1 October.
Based on monitoring from satellite imagery and other geospatial intelligence, they focus on Israeli preparations relating to air-launched ballistic missiles, refuelling aircraft and covert long-range drone surveillance in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East.
That could imply that Israel was planning a long-range missile response to Iran’s attack, described at one point as similar to the long-range strikes it conducted against the Houthis in Yemen on 29 September.
It appears to reflect an effort by the US and its closest partners to independently monitor Israel’s plans to attack Iran, though they do not predict its scale or scope. No potential targets in Iran were mentioned in the documents.
The two documents appear to represent a snapshot in time, and are likely to represent the outcome of continuous monitoring. At one point, it is said there is no evidence that Israel is planning to use a nuclear weapon.
…
Many elements in the two documents are described as shareable within the Five Eyes intelligence network made up of the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Others are marked as only shareable between the US and the UK.
…
Johnson on Sunday said he spoke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – referring to him as “my friend” – and explained how he had made it a point “to encourage him”. He also said there would be “a classified level briefing, and then others, but we’re following it closely”.
The US government usually does not care about leaked documents. Israel is, once again, a special case.
Iran is saying if Israel bombs its nuclear facilities, it will bomb Israel’s.
⚡️JUST IN
If strikes are carried out against our nuclear facilities, Israel will suffer equivalent retaliation against its nuclear facilities – Iranian Foreign Minister
Iran has already practised decimating Israel’s nuclear facilities 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/8CfLPyKwH2
— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) October 20, 2024
Basically, there is no way that an Israeli strike on Iran doesn’t lead to a spiral that rather quickly sucks in the US.
It’s not clear to me what the scale of that will be, but it’s going to happen. It’s already happening.