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23-10-2024
WASHINGTON/ TEHRAN/ JERUSALEM: US investigators are trying to find out how a pair of highly classified intelligence documents were leaked online.
The documents, which appeared on the messaging app Telegram on Friday, contain an alleged US assessment of Israeli plans to attack Iran.
The assessment is based on interpretation of satellite imagery and other intelligence.
On Monday White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden was “deeply concerned” about the leak.
Officials have not determined whether the documents were released due to a hack or a leak, Kirby said.
For three weeks now, Israel has been vowing to hit Iran hard in retaliation for Iran’s massed ballistic missile attack on Israel on 1 October.
Iran says that was in response to Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on 27 September.
Are the documents genuine?
Military analysts say the phrasing used in the headings looks credible and is consistent with similar classified documents revealed in the past.
Headed “Top Secret”, they include the acronym “FGI”, standing for “Foreign Government Intelligence”.
The documents appear to have been circulated to intelligence agencies in the Five Eyes alliance, the five Western nations that regularly share intelligence, namely the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The acronym “TK” in the documents refers to “Talent Keyhole”, a codeword covering satellite-based Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and Imagery Intelligence (IMINT).
What do they tell us?
Taken together, the two documents are a classified US assessment of Israel’s preparations to hit targets in Iran, based on intelligence analysed on 15-16 October by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
What features prominently is the mention of two Air Launched Ballistic Missile (ABLM) systems: Golden Horizon and Rocks.
Rocks is a long-range missile system made by the Israeli company Rafael and designed to hit a variety of targets both above and below ground. Golden Horizon is thought to refer to the Blue Sparrow missile system with a range of around 2,000km (1,240 miles).
The significance of this is that it would indicate that the Israeli Air Force is planning to carry out a similar but greatly expanded version of its ABLM attack on an Iranian radar site near Isfahan in April.
By launching these weapons from long range and far from Iran’s borders it would avoid the need for Israeli warplanes to overfly certain countries in the region like Jordan. The documents also report no sign of any preparations by Israel to activate its nuclear deterrent.
At the request of Israel, the US government never publicly acknowledges that its close ally Israel even possesses nuclear weapons, so this has caused some embarrassment in Washington.
What do they not tell us?
Glaringly absent from these documents is any mention of what targets Israel intends to hit in Iran, or when. The US has made no secret of its opposition to the targeting of either Iran’s nuclear research facilities or its oil installations.
Part of the current delay in Israel’s response is likely due to US concerns at escalation with less than a month to go before the US presidential elections. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
