Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, though these days we’re betting they wish they did. For the past few days, Israel has been aggressively bombarding the country with missiles, arguing that they have to do it because they’re on the verge of completing their nuclear program.
There’s a teeny problem here: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has long had a fatwa in place forbidding Iran from the acquisition, development, and use of nuclear weapons. The argument is that nukes are forbidden under Islamic law as they indiscriminately kill women, children, and the elderly.
You could argue that this is a lie to cover up secret nuclear weapon research, but Iran has had decades of opportunity to develop a nuke and, as they’re currently being attacked by Israel, clearly doesn’t have one right now. That’s also the conclusion of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who said in Mar. 2025 that:
Trump keeps repeating that "Iran can't have a nuclear weapon" to desensitize his base about going to war with Iran.
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) June 17, 2025
Tulsi Gabbard in March, 2025: "Iran is not building a nuclear weapon." pic.twitter.com/3GCoSicQ9b
“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 suspected in 2003”.
Q: Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) June 17, 2025
Trump: I don’t care what she said. They were very close to getting a nuke. pic.twitter.com/8PeFACJoPl
All of which somewhat undermines Israel’s insistence that Iran is perpetually days away from having a nuke and therefore must be bombed back into the Stone Age. Gabbard’s words were put directly to Trump by the press aboard Air Force One. His response: “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”
So long Gabbard?
Comments like these – combined with some recent snubs to Gabbard – have led Washington insiders to smell blood in the water and predict she may not be in her position for long. To her vague credit, she’s been consistently opposed to the United States waging war on Iran and just released a video warning that the world is “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before”.
She pins the blame on “warmongers”: “Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to. It’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness. We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.”
DNI Tulsi Gabbard repeats Putin’s talking points today, releasing an unhinged video where she claims that “political elites” want a nuclear war with Russia because they have sophisticated bomb shelters that will help them survive it. pic.twitter.com/fKhaCL0WDG
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 10, 2025
Gabbard, along with odd bedfellows Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene, are realizing that Israel is none-too-subtly dragging the United States into another bloody conflict in the Middle East. If she really is opposed to it, Trump will swiftly give her the boot. Maybe the Democrats will even take her back!
