U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon. Israel says it is — and President Donald Trump agrees. How that dichotomy is resolved may determine whether the United States enters what is already a deadly and destructive war.
Trump, who has repeatedly criticized the intelligence agencies that report to him, is at odds with one administration official in particular: Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
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Gabbard told Congress in March that Iran hasn’t tried to produce a nuclear bomb since 2003. But on Tuesday, June 18, the president had a completely different outlook.
“I don’t care what she said. I think they’re very close to having one,” he noted in a briefing with reporters on Air Force One.
A day later, he declined to say whether he would commit U.S. forces to Israel’s military campaign aimed at destroying suspected nuclear sites in Iran.
“I may do it,” Trump said, according to The New York Times. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
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Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program in 2015 in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018, but resumed negotiations this year.
Disputed intelligence
Ahead of air strikes that began on Friday, June 13, Israel shared intelligence with U.S. officials that suggested Iran was close to finishing a nuclear bomb and its scientists were working on the technology needed for detonation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said publicly that Iran was “marching very quickly” toward nuclear-strike capability.
“The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear … that they were working, in a secret plan, to weaponize the uranium,” Netanyahu told Fox News on Sunday, June 15.
That intelligence conflicts with the conclusions of U.S. officials.
In March, Gabbard delivered an annual threat assessment to Congress, declaring that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
However, she said Iran possessed a uranium stockpile that was “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
“In the past year,” she said, “we’ve seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency, an arm of the United Nations, estimates that Iran has 900 pounds of uranium enriched to 60% purity. Uranium reaches weapons-grade purity at 90%.
In a report released earlier in June, the Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks Iran’s nuclear ambitions, estimated that Iran has the capacity to convert its stock of uranium into weapons-grade in as little as three weeks if it chose to do so.
The institute’s president, David Albright, told NPR that Israel’s bombing campaign has already harmed Iran’s nuclear program.
“I think Israel is lengthening the time Iran would need to make nuclear weapons, probably significantly,” Albright said.
Tough talk
Iran has long said its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. In 2015, it agreed to dismantle much of the program and to allow international inspections in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western countries, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018 but resumed negotiations with Iran upon his return to office this year.
Iran ended the negotiations after Israel began bombing military and civilian sites on Friday, June 13. Since then, Iran says at least 224 of its citizens have died. In Israel, retaliatory missile strikes have killed at least 24 people.
Trump has toughened his stance on Iran since Israel launched its attacks. On social media, he called for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” He also made a veiled threat against Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote. “He is an easy target, but safe there. We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”
Khamenei responded with a threat of his own.
“Any form of U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be met with irreparable harm,” he said in a televised address, according to the BBC. “Wise people who know Iran, its people, and its history never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because Iranians are not those who surrender.”
Gabbard goes ‘off message’
As Trump weighs whether to join Israel’s war with Iran, he reportedly has become dissatisfied with Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman he chose as the director of national intelligence.
Politico reported that Trump was “incensed” after Gabbard posted a 3½-minute video on X, in which she warned of the dangers of nuclear war.
Gabbard made the video after visiting Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the first detonation of a nuclear bomb in combat in 1945. Over images of mass destruction — apparently generated by artificial intelligence — Gabbard said modern atomic weapons would be far more deadly.
“A single nuclear weapon today could kill millions in just minutes,” she said. “Just one of these nuclear bombs would vaporize everything at its core – people, buildings, life itself.”
“This isn’t some made-up science fiction story,” she added. “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.”
A senior administration official told Politico that Trump believes Gabbard spoke out of turn.
“I don’t think he dislikes Tulsi as a person,” the official said. “… But certainly the video made him not super hot on her … and he doesn’t like it when people are off message.”
Gabbard told CNN that she and Trump are “on the same page” as the president considers his options concerning Iran.
A White House spokesman, Steven Cheung, told Politico that Trump “has full confidence in his entire exceptional national security team.”
