Tulsi Gabbard, 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 [sic] has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003”.
As he rushed back to Washington on 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. “I think they were very close to having one.”
Trump’s assessment aligned him with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli 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 in 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 now 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, KC-135 refueling tankers and additional fighter jets to 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 for 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 and those 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.”
