The U.S. intelligence community watched Iran rebuild its bombed nuclear infrastructure for months — tracking every poured slab of concrete, every closed-roof vehicle, every hardened tunnel entrance — and then the Trump administration decided to bomb the country again. On February 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint operation codenamed “Epic Fury” by the Pentagon and “Roaring Lion” by Israel, striking targets across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the commander of the IRGC, Iran’s defense minister, and the secretary of the Iranian Security Council. The strikes killed over 200 people and injured 747, according to Iran’s Red Crescent. The justification rested on intelligence showing Iran was actively reconstituting the very nuclear facilities the U.S.
had struck eight months earlier during Operation Midnight Hammer. Satellite imagery from January 30, 2026 showed a new roof over a previously destroyed building at Natanz. At Isfahan’s Pickaxe Mountain, Iran had buried all three tunnel entrances under soil — a clear countermeasure against the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators that had hit them the first time. But three unnamed U.S. officials told The New York Times that Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat, and a prewar intelligence assessment found that military intervention was unlikely to change Iran’s leadership in either a short or long war. This article examines the intelligence timeline, the decision to strike, the controversy over justification, and the consequences that followed.
Table of Contents
- What Did U.S. Intelligence Actually See as Iran Rebuilt Its Nuclear Sites?
- Operation Epic Fury — How the Decision to Strike Was Made
- The Controversy Over Intelligence Justification
- Iran’s Retaliation and Regional Fallout
- The Missing Uranium Problem
- What the Prewar Intelligence Assessment Actually Said
- Where This Goes From Here
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Did U.S. Intelligence Actually See as Iran Rebuilt Its Nuclear Sites?
U.S. intelligence agencies maintained constant surveillance on iranian nuclear sites after Operation Midnight Hammer leveled Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on June 22, 2025. The monitoring was granular. At Natanz, satellite imagery captured the construction of a new roof over a previously destroyed building. Smaller vehicles and closed-roof vehicles near tunnel entrances suggested Iran was outfitting the tunnel complex’s interior, which analysts interpreted as the facility approaching operational readiness. At Isfahan’s Pickaxe Mountain, the surveillance showed Iran pouring concrete over the western tunnel entrance extension and reinforcing the eastern entrance with rock and soil. By February 2026, all three tunnel entrances were completely buried — a deliberate fortification against the deep-penetration bombs the U.S. had used the first time.
The intelligence picture had a significant gap, however. Iran still possessed an estimated 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, and the exact location of that material remained unknown. U.S. agencies expressed high confidence they could detect any attempt to move enriched uranium, but not knowing where it was stored in the first place undercut the certainty of any strike plan. This distinction matters: the administration’s public case for bombing rested on the idea that Iran was racing toward nuclear capability, yet the intelligence community could not account for the most dangerous component of any weapons program — the fissile material itself. The comparison between what intelligence agencies observed and what the administration claimed is instructive. Rebuilding hardened tunnels and constructing new roofs are defensive measures — they indicate Iran expected to be hit again, not necessarily that a bomb was imminent. Fortifying a facility and weaponizing enriched uranium are different activities, and the intelligence appears to have confirmed the former while remaining uncertain about the latter.
Operation Epic Fury — How the Decision to Strike Was Made
The February 28, 2026 strikes were massive in scope. U.S. and Israeli forces hit targets across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The operation was not limited to nuclear infrastructure — it was a decapitation strike. Israeli forces specifically targeted and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s defense minister, and the secretary of the Iranian Security Council were also killed. trump stated publicly: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” The decision to escalate from infrastructure strikes to leadership assassination marked a fundamental shift from Operation Midnight Hammer’s stated objective of eliminating nuclear capability.
The administration framed the intelligence on Iran’s rebuilding as proof that destroying facilities alone would not solve the problem — that regime change, or at least regime disruption, was necessary. However, this framing ran directly against the intelligence community’s own assessment. A prewar U.S. intelligence assessment, reported by The Washington Times, found that military intervention in Iran was unlikely to change the leadership in either a short or long war. The administration proceeded anyway. The limitation here is significant and should not be glossed over. If the intelligence community assessed that military strikes would not change Iran’s leadership trajectory, and the administration launched a decapitation strike regardless, then either the administration believed it knew better than its own analysts, or the intelligence was used selectively to justify a decision already made. Neither scenario inspires confidence in the process that led to Epic Fury.
The Controversy Over Intelligence Justification
Three unnamed U.S. officials with access to intelligence told The New York Times that Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat Iran posed. This is not a minor bureaucratic disagreement. When officials with direct access to the underlying intelligence break with the administration’s public narrative — even anonymously — it signals a gap between what the data showed and what the president said to justify lethal military action. PBS fact-checked Trump’s statements on the Iran strikes and found discrepancies in the administration’s characterization of the timeline and urgency. Trump had claimed after Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 that the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
When that claim was undercut by evidence of rebuilding, the administration pivoted to a new justification: that the rebuilding itself constituted an imminent threat requiring another round of strikes. The word “imminent” does heavy lifting in U.S. legal and political frameworks for the use of military force, and the intelligence officials who spoke to the Times were specifically challenging its application here. The London School of Economics assessed that the strikes may have turned Iran “from a state with latent nuclear capability into one with a nuclear grievance.” This distinction matters for anyone trying to evaluate whether the strikes made Americans safer. A country with latent capability is one that could theoretically build a weapon but has not done so. A country with a nuclear grievance is one with the motivation and political will to pursue a weapon at all costs. The strikes may have solved a technical problem while creating a far more dangerous political one.
Iran’s Retaliation and Regional Fallout
Iran’s response was immediate and broadly targeted. Missile and drone launches struck Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait — expanding the conflict well beyond Iran’s borders and into the territories of U.S. allies who host American military installations. This was not a proportional, tit-for-tat response aimed at Israeli or American forces. It was a regional escalation designed to raise the cost of the strikes for the entire Gulf security architecture. The tradeoff the administration accepted — or failed to anticipate — was significant. Decapitating Iran’s leadership did not paralyze the state’s ability to retaliate.
The IRGC’s distributed command structure and pre-positioned missile assets allowed Iran to launch retaliatory strikes even after losing its supreme leader, IRGC commander, defense minister, and security council secretary in a single night. The successor to Khamenei was named quickly: his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, assumed the role of supreme leader. Rather than creating a power vacuum that might lead to moderation, the strikes created a succession scenario that consolidated hardliner control under a figure with personal motivation for revenge. The Gulf states that absorbed Iranian missiles had not been consulted about or given meaningful advance warning of the scope of Epic Fury. This strained the very alliances the U.S. depends on for force projection in the region. The strikes were tactically successful — they hit their targets — but strategically, they expanded the conflict geographically and diplomatically in ways that the prewar intelligence assessment had implicitly warned about.
The Missing Uranium Problem
The single most important unresolved question after both rounds of strikes is the location of Iran’s 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium. This quantity of material, if enriched further to weapons-grade (90%), could potentially yield enough fissile material for multiple nuclear devices. The U.S. intelligence community expressed high confidence it could detect attempts to move the material, but detection and interdiction are not the same thing — particularly after the strikes destroyed the diplomatic channels and inspection frameworks that had previously provided some transparency into Iran’s nuclear activities. After Epic Fury, the U.S.
and Israel reportedly began discussing the deployment of special forces inside Iran to locate and secure the enriched uranium stockpile. This is an extraordinary escalation — from airstrikes to boots on the ground in a country of 88 million people with a military that, while degraded, remains functional. The fact that this option was even on the table suggests the intelligence community recognized that bombing alone had not solved the core proliferation risk. If the uranium could not be located from the air or by satellite, the entire premise of the strikes — that they were eliminating a nuclear threat — was incomplete at best. The warning here is straightforward: two rounds of devastating airstrikes, hundreds of casualties, the assassination of a head of state, and regional war — and the most dangerous material in Iran’s nuclear program remains unaccounted for. If the goal was nonproliferation, the results are far from clear.
What the Prewar Intelligence Assessment Actually Said
The prewar U.S. intelligence assessment, reported by The Washington Times on March 9, 2026, deserves particular scrutiny.
It concluded that military intervention in Iran was unlikely to change the country’s leadership in either a short or long war. This assessment was produced before the strikes, meaning the administration had access to its conclusions when making the decision to launch Epic Fury. The fact that the strikes explicitly targeted and killed Iran’s supreme leader suggests the administration either disagreed with its own intelligence community’s analysis or believed a decapitation strike would produce different results than a sustained military campaign — a distinction the assessment may not have specifically addressed, but one that subsequent events have already begun to test.
Where This Goes From Here
The CSIS analysis on whether Iran can rebuild its nuclear program points to a difficult reality: the knowledge and personnel base for nuclear enrichment cannot be bombed out of existence. Facilities can be destroyed and rebuilt. Tunnel entrances can be buried and re-excavated. The cycle of strike-and-rebuild has now played out twice in eight months, with each iteration raising the stakes and narrowing the off-ramps.
The LSE’s framing — that the U.S. may have converted latent capability into active grievance — suggests the next chapter of this conflict will be shaped less by satellite imagery of construction sites and more by the political will of a regime that has now lost its supreme leader to an airstrike. The deployment of special forces to secure enriched uranium, if it proceeds, would represent a new phase entirely — one with risks that dwarf anything seen so far. The intelligence community’s ability to track reconstruction from orbit is impressive, but it has not answered the fundamental question: did these strikes make a nuclear-armed Iran less likely, or did they make it inevitable?.
Conclusion
The sequence of events from June 2025 through February 2026 reveals a pattern that should concern anyone interested in government accountability. U.S. intelligence successfully monitored Iran’s rebuilding in real time — the surveillance worked. But the decision-making process that converted that intelligence into a justification for a second, far more devastating round of strikes appears to have overridden the intelligence community’s own assessment that military force was unlikely to achieve its stated objectives. Three officials with access to the intelligence said the threat was exaggerated. The prewar assessment said strikes would not change the regime.
The administration struck anyway, killed the supreme leader, and expanded the conflict across the Gulf. The 400 kilograms of enriched uranium remain unaccounted for. Iran’s retaliatory strikes hit five U.S.-allied nations. A new supreme leader — the son of the one just killed — is now in power. The American public deserves a full accounting of how intelligence was used, whether it was distorted, and whether the decisions made in their name actually advanced the security they were promised. Congressional oversight, independent review of the prewar intelligence assessments, and public transparency about the uranium’s status are not optional — they are the minimum that accountability requires.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Operation Midnight Hammer?
Operation Midnight Hammer was the codename for U.S. Air Force and Navy strikes on June 22, 2025, targeting three Iranian nuclear facilities: Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant, Natanz Nuclear Facility, and Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center. It was part of the broader Twelve-Day War. Trump claimed the strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, a characterization that subsequent rebuilding activity contradicted.
What was Operation Epic Fury?
Operation Epic Fury was the Pentagon’s codename for the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran launched February 28, 2026. Israel called its component “Roaring Lion.” The strikes hit 24 of 31 Iranian provinces, killed Supreme Leader Khamenei and several top military officials, and resulted in over 200 deaths and 747 injuries according to Iran’s Red Crescent.
Did U.S. intelligence support the decision to strike Iran again?
The picture is mixed. Intelligence agencies successfully tracked Iran’s rebuilding and detected concerning activity, including tunnel fortification and facility reconstruction at Natanz and Isfahan. However, three U.S. officials told The New York Times that Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat, and a prewar intelligence assessment concluded that military intervention was unlikely to change Iran’s leadership.
What happened to Iran’s enriched uranium?
As of the latest reporting, the location of Iran’s estimated 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium remains unknown. The U.S. and Israel have reportedly discussed deploying special forces inside Iran to locate and secure the stockpile, indicating that two rounds of airstrikes did not resolve the core proliferation concern.
Who replaced Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader?
Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was named as the new supreme leader following the February 28, 2026 strikes.
Which countries did Iran strike in retaliation?
Iran retaliated with missile and drone launches against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait — all U.S. allies hosting American military assets in the region.