The United States is investigating the unauthorized release of classified documents assessing Israel’s plan to attack Iran, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press. A fourth U.S. official said the documents appeared to be legitimate.
The document belongs to the U.S. Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, and shows that Israel is still keeping its military assets in place to carry out military strikes in response to Iran’s ferocious ballistic missile attack on October 1. It states that it is being moved to a new location. Documents could be shared within ‘. The Five Eyes are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
The document, marked top secret, was posted on the messaging app Telegram and was first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The investigation will determine how the documents were obtained, whether they were intentionally leaked by members of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained through other means, such as hacking, and whether other intelligence information was compromised. are also being investigated, one of the officials said. . As part of this investigation, authorities are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, officials said.
The United States has urged Israel to use the removal of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to force a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and has similarly urged Israel to further expand its military operations in northern Lebanon and threaten a broader regional war. He issued an urgent warning not to take any risks. However, Israeli leaders have repeatedly stressed that they have no intention of letting Iran’s missile attacks go unchecked.
The Pentagon said in a statement that it was aware of reports of the document but had no further comment.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the leaks of the two documents.
The document was first published online Friday through a Telegram channel, claiming it had been leaked by someone in the U.S. intelligence community and then the U.S. Department of Defense. This information appears to have been collected entirely using satellite image analysis.
One of the two documents was leaked by Air National Guard officer Jack Teixeira, who pleaded guilty in March to leaking high-level military documents related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and other national security secrets. It was similar in style to other Geospatial-Intelligence Agency materials.
The Telegram channel involved in the leak said it was based in Iran’s capital, Tehran. It has previously posted memes featuring Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and content supporting Tehran’s self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Middle Eastern extremist groups armed by the Islamic Republic.
