U.S. officials are investigating the alleged leak of two top-secret U.S. documents that show U.S. spy agencies are monitoring possible Israeli preparations to attack Iran, three U.S. officials said.
The region is nervous as it awaits Israel’s response to Iranian rocket fire on October 1, which Iran said was in response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the killing of its allies, including Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and powerful Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.
Two U.S. officials said the leaked documents appeared to be authentic. According to a US official, the damage to national security appears to be limited in scope, although the assessment is still ongoing.
US intelligence agencies declined to comment on the documents, which were published on Friday on the social media app Telegram.
Both documents are marked “top secret”. The headline of one document reads: “Israel: Air Force Continues Preparations for Strike on Iran and Conducts Second Large Force Exercise on October 15-16, 2024.”
The second document is called the “National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency” – this is the name of the American spy agency specializing in the analysis of satellite images and other sources of intelligence information.
The document’s headline reads: “Israel Defense Forces Continued Preparation of Key Munitions and Covert UAV Operations, Almost Certainly to Strike Iran, October 16, 2024,” referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
The text of the documents reads: “We cannot definitively predict the scale and scope of an attack on Iran, and such an attack could occur without further GEOINT warning.”
US Capitol.Aaron Schwartz/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images file
It also states that Israel appears to have dispersed its intermediate-range ballistic missiles, or MRBMs, as a defensive measure to protect them from an Iranian attack, and that there is no indication that Israel plans to launch a nuclear attack on Iran.
“MRBM dispersion is almost certainly defensive,” the document says. “We have seen no signs that Israel intends to use nuclear weapons.”
The apparent leak of the two documents comes after Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira pleaded guilty in March to posting a trove of top-secret documents on the social media app Discord. The leak was considered a deeply damaging security breach and resulted in calls from the intelligence community for much greater efforts to prevent leaks.
Mirna Alsharif contributed.