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TRUMP BRUSHES OFF US INTEL REPORTS ON IRAN TO ALIGN HIMSELF WITH
ISRAEL  
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Andrew Roth
June 17, 2025
The Guardian
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_ President has dismissed verdict by handpicked spy chief, Tulsi
Gabbard, that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons _

Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, appears before the
Senate Intelligence Committee for her confirmation hearing on Capitol
Hill, Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington., (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

 

Tulsi Gabbard
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the US director of national intelligence, delivered a concise verdict
during congressional testimony this March: the intelligence community
“continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and
supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program
that he suspended in 2003”.

As he rushed back to Washington
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Tuesday morning, Donald Trump swatted aside the assessment from the
official that he handpicked to deliver him information from 18 US
intelligence agencies. “I don’t care what she said,” said Trump
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were very close to having one.”

Trump’s assessment aligned him with Benjamin Netanyahu
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prime minister, who has warned that Iran’s “imminent” plans to
produce nuclear weapons required a pre-emptive strike from Israel –
and, he hopes, from the United States – in order to shut down the
Iranian uranium enrichment program for good.

It also isolates Trump’s spy chief, whom he nominated specifically
because of her skepticism for past US interventions
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the Middle East and of the broader intelligence community, which he
has described as a “deep state”.

Gabbard sought to tamp down on a schism with Trump, telling CNN that
Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat
assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media
don’t care to actually read what I said.”

But as the Trump administration
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appears closer than ever before to a strike on Iran, Gabbard has been
left out of key decision-making discussions and her assessments that
Iran is not close to a nuclear breakout has become decidedly
inconvenient for an administration now mulling a pre-emptive strike.

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” Trump wrote in a social media post on
Tuesday. The US has dispatched another carrier group,
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refueling tankers and additional fighter jets 
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the region. Those assets have been sent to give Trump “more
options” for a direct intervention in the conflict, US media have
reported.

Deliberations over the intelligence regarding Iran’s breakout time
to a nuclear weapon will be pored over if the US moves forward with a
strike that initiates a new foreign conflict for the US that could
potentially reshape the Middle East and redefine a Trump presidency
that was supposed to end the US era of “forever wars”.

Israel launched airstrikes last week in the wake of an International
Atomic Energy Agency report that formally declared Iran in breach of
its non-proliferation obligations
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the first time in 20 years and said the country had enriched enough
uranium to near weapons grade to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.

Gen Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of US Central Command who has
forcefully campaigned for a tougher stance on Iran, told members of
the armed services committee in the House of Representatives last week
that Iran could have enough weapons-grade uranium for “up to 10
nuclear weapons in three weeks”.

Yet a CNN report on Tuesday challenged that claim. Four sources
familiar with a US intelligence assessment said that Iran was “not
actively pursuing a nuclear weapon” and that the country was “up
to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a
target of its choosing”.

The skepticism over Iran’s potential for a nuclear breakout has also
been reflected in Gabbard’s distancing from Trump’s inner circle.
People often represent policy in the Trump administration
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with unpopular views find themselves on the outside looking in.

Trump last Sunday held a policy discussion with all the top members of
his cabinet on national security. But Gabbard was not there. Her
absence was taken as a sign that US policy was shifting in a direction
against Iran.

“Why was Gabbard not invited to the Camp David meeting all day?”
asked Steve Bannon, a member of Trump’s Maga isolationist wing that
has pushed against the US launching a direct strike against Iran.

“You know why,” responded Tucker Carlson, an influential pundit in
Trump’s America First coalition who had slammed “warmongers” in
the administration including popular Fox News hosts like Mark Levin.

Days after the Camp David meeting, Gabbard released a bizarre video in
which she warned about the threat of nuclear war, saying that this is
the “reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now”.

_“_Because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear
annihilation than ever before, political elite and warmongers are
carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she
said.

The remarks could have referred to US involvement in the conflict
between Russia and Ukraine. But it is with Iran that US policy appears
to be changing rapidly and avowed opponents of foreign interventions
appear to be falling in line in order to avoid losing clout in the
Trump administration.

Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian
enrichment”, said the vice-president, JD Vance, who has publicly
called on the US to avoid costly overseas interventions but has
remained muted over Iran. “That decision ultimately belongs to the
president.

“But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue,”
he continued. “And having seen this up close and personal, I can
assure you that he is only interested in using the American military
to accomplish the American people’s goals. Whatever he does, that is
his focus.”

_Andrew Roth is the Guardian's global affairs correspondent based in
Washington DC. He covers the state department and US foreign policy.
He was previously based in Russia for more than a decade, where he was
the Guardian's Moscow correspondent and reported on the Russian
invasion of Ukraine_

* Israel bombing attack
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* Iran
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* intelligence
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* nuclear weapons
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