Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that President Trump received detailed intelligence assessments on Iran before launching Operation Epic Fury - but she carefully avoided answering whether the intelligence community had assessed the threat as imminent, The Atlantic reports.
Gabbard's testimony, described in detail by national security correspondent Shane Harris, has revealed a widening gap between what intelligence agencies reported and what the president told the public, "Hvylya" reports, citing The Atlantic.
Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, pressed Gabbard directly. "There seems to be a discrepancy between what the intelligence community has reported over the years and what the president has said in terms of this action" in Iran, he said. "And my question is, did you tell him?" Gabbard avoided answering directly but said the agencies had provided Trump "with the intelligence related to this operation in Iran, before and on an ongoing basis."
The exchange grew more pointed when Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat from Georgia, read aloud a White House statement from the day after the war began: Trump had ordered "a military campaign to eliminate the imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime." Ossoff asked whether intelligence had assessed the threat as imminent. Gabbard told him the president is "the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat" - a characterization Harris calls evasive, since making precisely that determination is the intelligence community's job.
On Iran's nuclear program, Gabbard's written testimony noted that Iran had missile technology "it could use to begin to develop a militarily viable ICBM before 2035" but did not claim it had done so. She also acknowledged that after U.S. bombers struck nuclear-related facilities in late June, Iran had made "no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability." The entrances to bombed underground facilities, she told Congress, had been "buried and shuttered with cement."
Gabbard - who had taken passionate anti-war stances as a member of Congress - also confirmed a long-standing intelligence assessment: "This has long been an assessment of the IC that Iran would likely hold the Strait of Hormuz as leverage." CIA Director John Ratcliffe, also present at the hearing, backed her up, saying Iran had "specific plans to hit U.S. interests in energy sites across the region."
Previously, "Hvylya" reported on how Iran's deterrence collapse made nuclear weapons more attractive to other aspiring states.