President Donald Trump disputed the assessment from his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the intelligence community, stating his belief that Iran was “very close” to developing a nuclear weapon prior to Israel’s attack on its facilities last week.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One early Tuesday morning. “I think they were very close to having one.”
His comments align with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explanation for why Israel launched the first salvo against Iran last week, but they dispute remarks Gabbard made in March.
Gabbard testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee on March 26 and told lawmakers that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Gabbard also said the intelligence community has witnessed “an erosion of a decadeslong taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.”
Her comments match the analysis in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2025 annual threat assessment report, which notes that while Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not “reauthorized” the program he suspended, pressure has “probably built” on him to do so.
She is testifying with CIA Director John Ratcliffe before the Senate Appropriations Committee in a closed-door hearing on Tuesday.
Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, the combatant command that oversees the Middle East, told lawmakers last week before Israel began targeting Iran that Tehran has continued to enrich uranium to the point “for which there is no civilian purpose.”
Gabbard also told lawmakers that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile “is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Israel has targeted and damaged a couple of different Iranian nuclear facilities and taken out several nuclear scientists over the first days of the conflict, but it has largely left one of Tehran’s most hardened facilities untouched.
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, located within the Kūh-e Dāgh Ghū’ī mountain, is northeast of the city of Qom and about 100 miles south of Tehran. It’s so deeply embedded into the mountain that Israel’s forces are not believed to possess the capabilities needed to destroy it.
The Israelis are looking to the U.S. for assistance in destroying the Fordow facility, and even then, it’s unclear if the U.S.-made Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb with a 6,000-pound warhead, could bring down the facility.
The U.S. military has surged capabilities and troops to the Middle East, but it has not been involved in Israel’s operations against Iran. U.S. troops have only aided in helping Israel intercept incoming Iranian missiles.
Israeli leaders have openly discussed the possibility of assassinating Khamenei, though Trump nixed a plan to carry it out.
Last week, Gabbard released a video after visiting Hiroshima, Japan, issuing a stark warning about the threat of nuclear war.
“This isn’t some made-up science fiction story. 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 in the video.
ISRAEL LOOKS TO US TO HIT IRAN’S FORDOW NUCLEAR FACILITY
The former Hawaii lawmaker claimed the “political elite and warmongers” may be “confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to.”
Trump met with his foreign policy team at Camp David earlier this month, though Gabbard was not there, according to Axios.
Trump’s MAGA coalition has been divided over whether the U.S. should get directly involved. Some, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), believe Iran’s nuclear pursuit is worthy of getting the U.S. entangled in another Middle Eastern conflict, while others, such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, view it as a mistake that would violate the president’s “America First” and isolationist vision.
In the case of Carlson specifically, Trump dismissed the former Fox News host’s concerns on Monday, saying: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CANNOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”
