I can’t manage to get too worked up over the reports that American intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons development program are flawed. U. S. intelligence on Iran has always been awful. There seems to be a notion abroad in the land (particularly in Iran; the Iranians should know better) that Iran has been simply overflowing with CIA operatives. It is not now and never has been the case. Check the official after-action reports on TPAJAX, the covert operation to overthrow the Mossadegh government. It doesn’t suggest a deep intelligence network there.
At the time of the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 there were two CIA operatives in Iran. Two. (The citation for this is in one of the several autobiographies of those held hostage in the embassy. I’ll try to ferret out the specific citation.)
Since 1979 and the subsequent purges in Iran we’ve had virtually no human intelligence in Iran so the notion that the U. S. would spitball on possible Iranian nuclear weapons development sites isn’t terribly surprising.
Basically it proves nothing one way or another about the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons development program which IMO continues to be the most likely explanation for the behavior of the Iranian regime.
BTW I’ve read an account from the son of one of the Iranian military officers involved in the coup that disputed substantial parts of the official CIA account. His story was that the CIA was resume-padding and had a lot less to do with the coup than they were claiming. I believe the citation for this is in my old post on the overthrow of Mossadegh.
