Iran’s government has been in decline since the war began on February 28, but Tehran and its proxies are able to attack US and allied interests in the Middle East, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Wednesday.
“The regime in Iran is intact but largely degraded by Operation Epic Fury,” Gabbard said, referring to the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, in her opening remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats to the United States.
“However, Iran and its proxies remain capable and will continue to attack US and allied interests in the Middle East. If a hostile regime survives, it will seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its missile and UAV (drone) forces,” Gabbard said.
Later, Gabbard deflected questions about whether Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, after claiming in her opening statement that there was no evidence the administration could rebuild its “defunct” nuclear enrichment program.
The 2-1/2-hour hearing was the first significant public appearance since the start of the war by Gabbard, who had kept a low profile for months.
The inquiry has identified China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as key adversaries, but is now in its third week focusing on the Iran war. Lawmakers — including some of President Donald Trump’s Republicans and Democrats — have said they want more information about a campaign that has killed thousands, disrupted the lives of millions and roiled energy and stock markets.
Democrats in particular have complained that Congress has not been adequately briefed on the conflict, which has cost US taxpayers billions, and have demanded public testimony from classified briefings held over the past two weeks.
“The complete lack of clarity is important to everybody,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado said of the US plan to remove the threat from Iran after a testy exchange with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
First major resignation over the war
The hearing with Gabbard, Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and other intelligence officials culminated in Tuesday’s shock announcement that Gabbard’s top aide had resigned, citing the war.
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Joe Kent, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, is the first senior official in the Trump administration to resign over the conflict. The office of the DNI oversees the Counter-Terrorism Centre.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war on Iran. Iran poses no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war because of pressure from Israel and its powerful lobby,” Kent wrote to Trump.
Ratcliffe said during the trial that he disagreed with Kent. “Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for a long time and I think it poses an immediate threat this time,” he said.
The threat assessment Gabbard presented to the committee added to the confusion about Iran’s nuclear program. Some administration officials said before the war that Iran was weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, which was one of the reasons given for launching the airstrikes.
In written remarks sent to the committee before the hearing, he said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was wiped out in the US and Israeli strikes in June and that Washington had made no effort to rebuild its enrichment capacity.
However, when he spoke to senators, Gabbard said the intelligence community assessed that Iran was trying to recover from damage to its infrastructure in July.
He asserted that it was not the responsibility of US intelligence agencies to determine “what is and is not an imminent threat” to the United States, and that only the president could make such a determination.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, who chairs the committee, praised Trump in his opening remarks, saying his actions in Iran and elsewhere have made the world safer.
The committee’s vice chairman, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, criticized the administration for failing to be clear about its motivation for what he called a “war of choice.” He blamed Gabbard for investigating elections in the United States, while the agency has cut staff involved in activities such as monitoring Iran.
Gabbard said the U.S. intelligence community has not identified any foreign threats to November’s congressional elections.
Questions swirled about what Trump was told before deciding to join Israel in attacking Iran. Ratcliffe said he had “countless” meetings with Trump before the first strikes and that he would brief the president “10 to 15 times a week.”
Sources familiar with US intelligence reports warned Trump, for example, that attacking Iran could provoke retaliation against US Gulf allies, despite his claims that Tehran’s response was surprising.
Trump’s assertion followed other administration claims not supported by US intelligence reporting, such as that Iran would soon have a missile capable of hitting the US homeland and would need two to four weeks to make a nuclear bomb.
According to two other sources familiar with the matter, Trump was told ahead of the operation that Tehran was likely to try to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route for oil and gas.
Gabbard declined to comment on whether Trump had been briefed or asked about the possibility of closing the strait if Iran attacked neighboring Gulf states, saying the intelligence community was providing Trump with “all the best objective intelligence available to inform his decisions.”
The House of Representatives Intelligence Committee will hold a worldwide threat hearing on Thursday.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiaku and Jonathan Lande; Additional reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Dan Durfee, Cynthia Osterman and Nia Williams)
(tags to translate)Iran(T)Tulsi Gabbard(T)US Intelligence(T)US News(T)World
