US intelligence documents that revealed details of Israel’s plans for a strike on Iran were made public last week.
According to a report by The War Zone, citing an anonymous American official, there is no indication that Israel will delay a planned attack on Iran despite the leaked intelligence documents.
The Times newspaper reported that Israel had been forced to postpone its retaliation for the missile barrage launched by Iran on October 1 after details of its plans were leaked.
Top secret materials, reportedly prepared by the Pentagon’s National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), were published last Friday on an anonymous Telegram channel named Middle East Spectator. The documents detailed Israel’s supposed preparations for a large-scale attack on Iran in response to the missile attack earlier this month.
The US authorities have not denied the authenticity of the documents. The FBI confirmed on Tuesday that it had launched an investigation into the leak.
In its Thursday article, The War Zone quoted an unnamed US official as saying, “We have no indication that Israel is delaying any action because of the document leak.”
The report came after The Times, citing an anonymous “intelligence source with knowledge of Israeli deliberations,” claimed earlier in the day that the “leak of the American documents delayed the [Israeli] attack due to the need to change certain strategies and components.”
“There will be a retaliation, but it has taken longer than it was supposed to take,” the source added.
According to the British newspaper, “Israel is concerned the leak could help Iran predict certain patterns of attack,” which has supposedly forced it to “develop an alternative plan.”
The Middle East Spectator Telegram channel, described by Western media as pro-Iranian, claimed last Saturday that it had received the secret US intelligence documents from an “anonymous source on Telegram who refused to identify himself.”
Last week, The Washington Post alleged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised US President Joe Biden that he would refrain from targeting Iran’s oil or nuclear infrastructure.
On October 1, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to the killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general. While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has insisted that the majority of the projectiles were intercepted, Tehran claimed to have hit several Israeli military targets.
Israel has since threatened to deliver a “deadly, pinpoint accurate, and surprising” retaliation, without specifying any time frame.
Tehran has warned Israel against conducting any strikes, vowing a “decisive and regretful” response, should it do so.