Evening Edition: The Pentagon Shares Damage Assessment Of Iranian Nuclear Facilities
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I'm Jimmy Fallon. I'm Madison Allworth. I'm Bill Hemmer. And this is the Fox News Rundown. Thursday, June 26th, 2025. I'm John Saucier. The White House is praising the U.S. military for last weekend's Operation Midnight Hammer, in which Iranian nuclear facilities were targeted with some very sophisticated weaponry. Now there's a question about whether or not this mission actually wiped out Iran's nuclear enrichment capabilities long term.

Many parts of the cycle and the program were disrupted and have been disrupted. The question is, how much does it set the Iranian program back? And that is open to debate right now. And that's what the intelligence community is looking at. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refuting a leaked Pentagon report that claimed U.S. strikes had little impact on Iran's nuclear program. We significantly damaged the nuclear program, setting it back by years. He appeared alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Kaine. By design, we don't grade our own homework. The intelligence community does.

And as we learn more about the results of this mission, we are wondering where Iran's nuclear program now stands. The Defense Intelligence Agency is basically the main military intelligence agency. It reports to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Our guest today is Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin reporting from the Pentagon. So these are the Defense Department's own analysts who put out

about this, what I would describe as a very preliminary, low confidence was how it was described to me, report in the initial hours after the bombing strike this weekend on the Fordow complex and the other complexes, the three sites in Iran. The DIA is, you know, one of

17 intelligence agencies that put together the ODNI, the Director of National Intelligence, will put together the intelligence from all of these agencies into a final product for the president. And that will then be presented to the president and the defense secretary. But DIA is very good at what it does. They, along with the NSA and the National Geospatial Agency, which focuses on SIGINT and satellite data,

They pulled together information for the Pentagon, intelligence, if you will. And this preliminary report went online.

basically up until 2100, so 9 o'clock the Sunday, a little over 24 hours after the strikes took place. So it is very initial. And we know that initial battle damage assessment can be wrong. It's been wrong in the past. But this was a data point that was leaked, and there is a leak investigation about it. And

What I can say is that the defense secretary was extremely upset, very emotional today in the Pentagon briefing room talking about the leak and any suggestion. He tried to twist it to any suggestion that the B-2 bomber pilots hadn't done their job or the weapons hadn't worked. That's not really what the intelligence was saying. It was suggesting that the program, the Iranian nuclear program, based on the initial report

battle damage assessment could have been pushed back only a few months to up to a year. That's not what they were aiming for with these strikes and not what the president and defense secretary has said occurred. They're saying that the entire

nuclear program, Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. Now, that's not an intelligence term. And the intelligence community doesn't speak that way. So it's all open to interpretation. I think what's fair to say based on our reporting is that the infrastructure, the centrifuge cycles that were based at Fordow, deep underground at that about 300 feet deep underground, are

They were completely disrupted by the bombing. Those 12 bunker buster bombs that were dropped there, 30,000 pounds of bombs, they were dropped on that facility. At Natanz, where there were centrifuge cycles, cascades of them, they would have been disruptive. Many parts of the cycle and the program were disrupted and have been disrupted. The question is, how much does it set the Iranian program back?

And that is open to debate right now. And that's what the intelligence community is looking at. But the defense secretary was very upset today and got very emotional at the podium talking about, you know, the leaked report. But that being said, they're not saying that the report

is wrong or that it's fake. They're saying that it was just too soon to say. Two quick follow-ups for that, Jennifer. First of all, the classification of this report being low confidence. I mean, for just a regular Joe Schmo like me, that doesn't sound like it's set in stone. Can you, I guess, delve a little bit more into that classification and just what it means? Well,

Well, absolutely. Low confidence means what it sounds like, low confidence. But often the intelligence community and most of the battle damage assessment that I'm told will come from this strike because the U.S. does not have people on the ground able to go into the sites and really examine what happened.

They're limited in that way that the intelligence community most likely won't have anything higher than a medium intelligence, medium confidence report. Low to medium confidence will likely be much of the intelligence that comes out of this short of having weapons inspectors back in there. And as the defense secretary said, you would need a big shovel to get into that Fordow facility right now. He is right about that.

that. General Dan Koehm gave some great details about how the bunker busters worked and worked very well in terms of getting into Fordow. This is a plan that had been put in place by Pentagon targeters for, they've been working on it for 15 years. And the way they got in, and we reported this on last Saturday night, is that they dropped the first bunker buster to remove the concrete and dirt that the Iranians had tried to put over to disguise the air shafts.

above, but the U.S. clearly had those marked, probably using previous satellite imagery, and the GPS positioning of the bunker busters allowed them to strike very, very direct onto that target. Those air shafts are significant because then the follow-on

five bunker busters, each of them 30,000 pounds, went through the same hole through the air shaft. And that meant they didn't have to break through the hard rock and it didn't slow down the bombs. They went straight down the air shaft, which was somewhat genius on the part of the targeters. And I'm told that they got pretty far down. And in fact, the fuses were set so that the explosion would have

occur just five feet off the ground floor of that complicated complex where the enrichment was taking place. So pretty much you can assume that the centrifuges were all knocked out by that explosion. It would be very difficult to imagine any of them surviving. But that's not really the point. The point is that the Iranians we know from the IAEA and from their own declarations had

enriched to 60%, that's almost weapons grade, 440 kilograms, that's almost 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium. And there is some indication and possibility that they moved. In fact, they said they were going to. They told the IAEA they were going to move that enriched uranium before the strikes. And so if they did so, where did it go? Where is it right now? Because if you have centrifuges hidden in

hidden elsewhere, and we know that Iran has secret components to and secret sites attached to this very spread out nuclear complex, then that enriched uranium could be used in the future for a nuclear bomb. Nobody says it could be done tomorrow or within days, but it wouldn't take that long to get it back up and running. So that's where there is a discrepancy in the details. The military side of this, the military

planning and the military strikes that took place were all absolutely according to plan. The B-2 bombers, they did the pilots, they did their job. The GBU-57 bunker busters did their job. The Tomahawks that were fired from that submarine from 400 miles away that hit Isfahan, they did their job. But there are real questions about what

happen to the highly enriched uranium? Where is it? And until the IAEA or the United States and Israel know where that is and accounts for it, that still leads the possibility that the Iranians could be back in business at some point.

Israel and the United States trying to set back or destroy Iran's capability to produce a nuclear weapon. But now the question is, was the military able to do that? We're discussing it today with Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin. She was at a Pentagon press briefing this morning on the topic, and we'll get more of her reporting next.

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My next question is, what are we saying now, Jennifer, assuming that the Iranians did move that into rich uranium? Sure, we were able to disrupt. I think that's a good way for you to put it. Many of their nuclear facilities and you definitely have to credit the U.S. military for their fantastic work there and just how

amazing this mission actually was. But if they didn't get the enriched uranium, maybe it's hidden somewhere inside Iran or elsewhere. We don't know right now. Where does that leave not only the U.S. military, but Israel as well? I mean, they really were the ones who went in there first and said, we're going to go after Iran's nuclear capabilities. But President Trump wants a ceasefire here.

Well, President Trump, I think, does deserve credit for getting a ceasefire right after those U.S. strikes. The U.S. did not want to get sucked into a long war with Iran or get sucked into a back and forth tit for tat strikes again.

from, you know, in terms of Iran responding, if Iran responded and killed Americans or destroyed the U.S. military bases, that would require an escalation on the escalation ladder and the U.S. would then get sucked into another war in the Middle East. The president did not want that to happen. So what happened on Monday? The U.S. got a heads up, thanks to probably some allies in the region.

Qatar and Oman, that Iran was going to fire 14 ballistic missiles at the main U.S. air base in Qatar, Al Udeid. It's the largest U.S. base in the Middle East. That base had basically been emptied out except for 44

young soldiers between the age of 21 and 28, and they were manning, 22 apiece, two Patriot missile batteries, and they shot down all of those ballistic missiles. Nobody was killed, and that allowed President Trump to then demand a ceasefire from Iraq

Iran, also of Israel. Now, I heard at the time that Israel was upset. They needed a few more days. They felt a little bit longer to keep because they felt that they really had the regime, the Iranian regime on their heels, and they had more sites that they wanted to take out. But President Trump did what was best for America.

in that case, and he got the ceasefire, which then allowed the U.S. military to not have to escalate further. And that was a very significant achievement to carry out the kind of, send the deterrent message that the U.S. military did with those B-2 bombers and the precision strikes that no other military in the world could carry out. That was significant. But

it does leave open the question if there are not negotiations after this, if there is not an agreement to inspections, if there's not agreement from the Iranians that they will not pursue a nuclear weapon and there's not oversight of that program, they very well could rebuild in a matter of years.

Jennifer, very quickly, one last thing for you. The U.S. military posture has changed in the Middle East. We know that more aircraft carriers have been sent over there. Can you just kind of give us an idea of how that's changed and what it looks like right now? Because that's kind of another bargaining chip President Trump has used to trying to put pressure on Iran, changing the U.S. posture.

Yes, there are two aircraft carrier strike groups, the Carl Vinson and then also the Nimitz, which is on its final deployment. Actually, ironically, the Nimitz had been the aircraft carrier that the U.S. Navy had used before.

when the American hostages were taken in Iran at the embassy in 1979, and there was a failed mission to try and rescue them. So the Nimitz has a storied history, and the Carl Vinson, as we know, was out there already. So there were two aircraft carrier groups in place on Saturday when these strikes went down, and the Tomahawks were fired from what we know to be an Ohio-class submarine that was about 400 miles away

But we also know that the USS Ford left Norfolk and is en route to the Mediterranean, perhaps the European Command area of operations. So that would be a third aircraft carrier in the vicinity. It's not clear that I don't think with this current

ceasefire, I doubt that they would need to keep three aircraft carriers in the Middle East. That's a lot for the Middle East right now, especially given the fact that there are tensions with China in the Pacific and protection of Taiwan. Those aircraft carriers have to be very carefully placed globally, again, as a deterrent message to those who might

cause our allies and others harm. Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin reporting for the Pentagon. Jennifer, really appreciate the insight here. Thanks for joining us as always on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition podcast. Thank you.

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