The United States is investigating a leak of highly classified US intelligence, dated 15 and 16 October, assessing Israel’s plans to attack Iran following a powerful ballistic missile assault on 1 October, US officials said on condition of anonymity.
The top secret documents, published on the messaging app Telegram and first reported by CNN and Axios, include labelling indicating that only the US and its Five Eyes allies Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – can see them. They are attributed to the US Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, and note that Israel is still redeploying military forces to retaliate against Iran after the first October attack.
The investigation is probing how the documents came to be obtained, whether they may have been deliberately leaked by a member of the US intelligence community or whether they might have been received by other means, such as hacking. Officials said that the investigation is to determine who had access to the documents before they were released.
The documents first appeared online on Friday through a Telegram channel claiming they were leaked by someone in the US intelligence community and then by the US Department of Defence. The channel identifies itself as based in Tehran, Iran’s capital.
In a statement, the Pentagon responded that it was aware of reports of the documents, but did not provide further comment. Any such leak automatically trigger an investigation by the federal bureau in conjunction with the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. The FBI declined to comment.
The leak came at an extremely sensitive time in US-Israeli relations and will surely infuriate the Israelis, who were preparing to strike Iran in response to the 1 October rocket attack. One of the documents also implies what Israel has always refused to confirm publicly: the country has nuclear weapons. The Israeli military, for its part, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the leak of the two documents.
This is not the first leak of classified documents. A major US intelligence leak last year also strained US relations with allies and partners, including South Korea and Ukraine, after a National Guard member posted top secret information on the social network Discord.
