By now, we’ve all been blasted with multiple news alerts informing us of the U.S. Intelligence Community assessment that the recent attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities were ineffective. The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, claims that Iran’s nuclear program was set back only a few months and that the strikes failed to destroy the targets. As someone who has watched these kinds of stories unfold for decades, I can say with near confidence that this story is a hoax. Here are five reasons:

1. The facilities have not been occupied by anyone capable of making that assessment.

Nuclear facilities like those at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan normally have staff present 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Iran claims to have evacuated the facility some time ago. It appears that the United States may have provided some advance warning to the Iranians to prevent needless loss of life and, I suspect, scattering radiation with a direct strike on the stockpile. No Iranian was killed by the attack and there’s been no marked increase in radiation following the attack.

The facilities were completely cleared of any janitors, maintenance workers, and security guards. Even if the facilities had internal cameras to monitor whether the explosions collapsed the structures, that would still not be enough information to assess whether the sites were functional. As a former construction claims attorney with experience litigating subsurface conditions, I can report that it takes multiple complicated systems to permit humans to safely occupy an underground structure, let alone one that was involved in nuclear enrichment. The explosions would have rattled the plumbing, the electrical, the fire suppression, the de-humidification, the air handling, and the internal mechanics of any heavy equipment that remained after the evacuation.

If the intelligence community claimed the strikes inflicted no damage, one might be able to draw the conclusion that the internal systems remained intact. But an assessment of “some” damage or “light” damage without actual testing and or attempts at operating the internal systems is absurd. It’s a call that is impossible to make remotely.

2. It takes a long time to diagnose and repair building damage—particularly when underground systems are involved.

To maintain an underground facility, there must be several systems that interact with the surface. For example, there must be a way to vent waste gases. There must be a system to pump in fresh air. The facility must have a way of generating or receiving electricity. It must have access to fresh drinking water and a way of expelling liquid waste when toilets flush. The facility would require elevators that might be put out of alignment. It would require a de-humidification system. There needs to be a system to guard against noxious gases that sometimes infiltrate mines and excavations. The only way to know if these systems remain functional is to start them up again and test their performance. If there’s nobody there to do that, then it’s irresponsible to start throwing out damage repair timelines with the precision of “just a few months.”

It’s very expensive and time-consuming to rehabilitate an existing building that has been damaged. This is particularly challenging when the facility is underground and everything must pass through elevators. There’s no possible way that even the Iranians know how long it will take to fix the buildings before they can access them. Yet bureaucrats from Langley claim to have special knowledge of all these conditions. This is a motivated intelligence assessment masquerading as an engineering assessment.

3. As with the Russia-Collusion Hoax, the legacy media coordinated the spread of this apparent hoax.

I received multiple news alerts from multiple news outlets. Even the web search engine Perplexity AI geared up to send me an alert insisting the Iran strikes failed to inflict disabling damage. When news is this coordinated and relentlessly repeated, you can be sure it is propaganda, not news.

4. The story has obvious political motives.

Nothing could be more harmful to Democrats than for the president to have achieved peace and a denuclearized Iran with a single strike. But the Iranians have an incentive to exaggerate, too. They need to keep up appearances regarding their nuclear enrichment capability (and their ability to stave off U.S. and Israeli attacks) at least until there’s a final negotiated settlement.

5. The headline doesn’t match the story.

Although the headlines project confidence that intelligence officials have assessed that the strike, “Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months,” the body of the article that follows is invariably full of speculation and qualifiers. For example, the Times didn’t actually get a copy of or read the report that supposedly makes this claim. Instead, they talked to “anonymous officials” who say they saw the report.

Who did the report rely on to make this claim? The article doesn’t say. Do all officials agree? No.

According to the story,

Other officials noted that the report found that the three nuclear sites—Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan—had suffered moderate to severe damage, with the facility at Natanz damaged the most. It is not clear whether the Iranians will try to rebuild the programs.

So this is all dueling guesswork with The New York Times elevating the guesses that reinforce its own political agenda. The Times adds that the, “Defense Intelligence Agency report indicates that the sites were not damaged as much as some administration officials had hoped.” How would they know? Do they have sources inside the damaged buildings? Or are they just conjuring up wishful thinking, the way Christopher Steele helped the FBI “confirm” its suspicions that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to interfere with the 2016 election?

If I were the president, I would fire any intelligence official connected with this obvious disinformation campaign. Making up facts to undermine the commander-in-chief is not the proper role of an intelligence agency.