A journalistic investigation has uncovered a systematic disinformation campaign led by Israel, aimed at misleading public opinion about the true results of military operations targeting Iran.
An investigative report published by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot revealed a systematic disinformation campaign led by the Israeli political establishment, with the complicity of elements within the military and security apparatus. The campaign aimed to distort and mislead public opinion regarding the true outcomes of the military operations targeting Iranian nuclear and missile facilities. The report, which documented the erosion of truth as the first casualty of the war, revealed how security figures and institutions were employed to fabricate narratives of victory, while internal intelligence assessments indicated a failure to achieve the stated objectives and the continued strength of the Iranian threat posed by its fissile materials and missile arsenal.
According to the report, the crux of this scandal revolves around claims made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump regarding the "complete destruction" of Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. They asserted that the strikes eliminated the nuclear threat for generations to come. However, internal Pentagon, US, and Israeli intelligence reports completely contradicted this narrative, confirming that while the damage was significant, it did not amount to total destruction. In a desperate attempt to bolster the political narrative, the Prime Minister's office exerted immense pressure on senior intelligence officers to sign documents confirming the destruction of the nuclear program. This was met with staunch refusal from top intelligence leaders, who considered it a falsification of the truth and a breach of professional ethics.
Faced with this professional rejection, the political establishment resorted to more flexible alternatives. Pressure was exerted on the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, headed by a director general with no analytical nuclear background, to sign a distorted document claiming that the attacks had rendered the enrichment facilities unusable and delayed the nuclear program for many years. This document superficially succeeded in passing off the political narrative, but it ignored the crucial fact, as scientists had warned, that enough fissile material to produce dozens of atomic bombs had not been destroyed but had been hidden by Iran in fortified bunkers. This meant that the actual delay to the nuclear program amounted to only a few months, not "generations" as had been promoted.
The manipulation of truth wasn't limited to the nuclear issue; it extended to fabricating pretexts for war and spreading misinformation about the missile threat. The Israeli political leadership justified the operations by claiming the existence of a "nuclear and total annihilation threat" and decisive Iranian progress toward acquiring nuclear weapons, despite US and Israeli intelligence assessments at the time confirming the absence of an active "weapons team" and the lack of any order from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to manufacture a bomb. Simultaneously, Netanyahu and the military leadership claimed to have "removed the existential threat" posed by Iranian ballistic missiles, ignoring the mathematical and military reality that the airstrikes destroyed only a third of the missiles and approximately half of the launch sites, while critical production infrastructure, such as planetary mixing units, remained intact, thus preserving Iran's missile arsenal as a threat.
In a move to further obscure the truth, the Israeli military concealed the findings of a "combat damage assessment" conducted in late 2025, which confirmed the failure to completely destroy the nuclear sites, and refused to respond to any press inquiries on the matter. The official narrative also exaggerated the scale of the targeting of Iranian nuclear scientists, promoting the elimination of "all the program's experts," while intelligence reports indicate that only nine scientists were killed, four of them top-tier, out of hundreds of engineers and scientists who constitute the core of Iran's nuclear expertise. This renders the claim of dismantling the scientific system mere propaganda.
In the second round of confrontation, which erupted in early 2026, the contradiction between reality and political strategy became even more apparent when Netanyahu insisted on adding "overthrowing the Iranian regime" as a primary objective of the war. Despite unequivocal intelligence warnings from Military Intelligence and the Mossad, which described the plan as "delusional" and doomed to failure, the Israeli military chose not to confront the political echelon for fear of the repercussions. Instead, the military reformulated the objective to become "creating the conditions" for regime change, a plan that ultimately failed miserably and resulted in Mojtaba Khamenei assuming power, leading a regime even more hardline and extremist than its predecessor.
In the aftermath of this complex situation, official attempts to contain the damage emerged. The Israeli Prime Minister's Office, the IDF Spokesperson, and the Atomic Energy Commission all denied the findings of the investigative report. They asserted that the operations were "historic" and had eliminated the nuclear and missile threat, describing the report as a biased attempt to downplay security achievements. The Atomic Energy Commission, for its part, insisted on the authenticity of the document it had signed, disregarding the scientific reservations that accompanied its drafting. Ultimately, however, the report concludes with a grave warning about the danger of professional and military institutions being reduced to mere tools of political propaganda, posing an existential threat to Israel and its ability to make critical decisions based on factual data.
