Leon Panetta, the former director of the CIA during Barack Obama’s first term, has warned that President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran – and the intelligence disputes surrounding it – only serve to emphasize “how dangerous a world we live in right now.”
Panetta, 86, who also served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and currently co-hosts the foreign policy podcast One Decision, told The i Paper: “I don’t think there’s any alternative but to understand how dangerous a world we live in right now.
“Not only because of the adversaries that are out there – whether it’s China, or Russia, or North Korea, or Iran, or terrorism – but also because of the concerns about leadership, and whether or not the U.S. will exercise the right kind of leadership in a dangerous world.”
After Israel launched air strikes against Iran on Friday June 13 as part of its Operation Rising Lion offensive, intended to stop Tehran developing a nuclear weapon, Trump initially kept his distance before dropping bunker-busting bombs on three Iranian uranium enrichment sites over the weekend.
In the run-up, the president dismissed the significance of his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard briefing Congress in March that Iran was not currently advancing its efforts to build a weapon of mass destruction.
He also sidelined her from Situation Room meetings discussing the conflict but offered no evidence of his own to contradict her assessment.
The president and his administration have since attacked The New York Times and CNN for reporting on a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that found the damage done to the Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan facilities was not as severe as Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had indicated.
Responding to those tensions, Panetta said: “There’s no question that when the U.S. president makes a statement that our intelligence assessments are wrong and doesn’t believe our own intelligence, that creates a very dangerous moment.
“It undermines the work of our intelligence professionals who really are focused on trying to provide the president with the truth. When the president questions their credibility, that certainly undermines their morale, I’m sure.
“But secondly, it also creates a real problem for the president, because if he rejects the intelligence he’s receiving, then what will be the basis for the decisions that he makes in the future, and that is a very scary prospect.”
The former official added: “I have always been confident about our intelligence assessments with regards to Iran… The fundamental question is: did they make a decision to proceed with developing a weapon? And I think our intelligence indicates that that still was not the case.”
For Panetta, the episode provides the latest example of Trump’s “unpredictability” as a leader, which poses a risk to America’s NATO allies, who met this week in the Netherlands, at a time of heightened international unease.
“It really does rest with our European allies to do everything necessary to make sure that NATO is prepared militarily, to be able to respond if necessary,” he said.
