US intel chief Gabbard was not rebuilding Iran’s pre-war enrichment | US-Israel war over Iran news

Washington, DC – US National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard said the United States intelligence community assessed that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capability after the US and Israeli attacks last year.

Wednesday’s revelations appear to undercut one of President Donald Trump’s key justifications for joining Israel in launching the latest war against Iran.

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly cited Iran’s nuclear ambitions as one of the main reasons for abandoning ongoing diplomatic talks in favor of military action.

“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer,” Gabbard said in written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, referring to US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, “Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was wiped out”.

“There have been no subsequent attempts to try to rebuild their enrichment capacity,” Gabbard said in written testimony.

Notably, Gabbard did not read the portion of her testimony provided to committee members during her publicly televised oral testimony. When pressed on why she passed up the part, Gabbard said she didn’t have enough time. She did not deny the assessment.

“You chose to leave out the parts that are against Trump,” Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, responded.

Trump has repeatedly said the June 2025 strikes at the end of the 12-day war between Israel and Iran “wiped out” Iran’s nuclear capability, warning that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose an immediate threat to the US.

Tehran has denied for years that it is seeking nuclear weapons. Nuclear and weapons monitors have maintained that even if Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapon, it does not represent a short- or medium-term threat.

Oman’s foreign minister, who brokered the latest round of US-Iran indirect nuclear talks ahead of the war, has denied claims by Trump officials that the latest talks are not making any progress.

The Guardian newspaper reported this week that Jonathan Powell, the United Kingdom’s national security adviser, attended the final session of the talks and concluded that the Iranian position did not justify immediate war, citing sources familiar with the situation.

The administration has settled on no single justification for launching the war, citing Iran’s ballistic capabilities, its potential threat to Israel and US forces in the Middle East, and the totality of the Iranian government’s actions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The concept of “imminent threat” is important in determining the legality of Trump’s decision to strike a sovereign nation under international law.

This is significant for US domestic law, under which the president can only use the military in instances of immediate self-defense. Only Congress can officially declare war or authorize extended military operations.

Iran’s government ‘intact but largely degraded’

The White House said earlier this week that Iran’s ballistic missile capability had been “functionally destroyed,” that Iran’s navy had been “effectively destroyed” and that the US and Israel had dominated the country’s airspace.

Experts have assessed that Iran still retains the military capability to inflict significant damage in the region, and that it continues to exercise military influence over the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, Gabbard offered a more sobering assessment than the White House, saying that despite the assassinations of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, top military officials and recently the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, and Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, “the regime in Iran appears intact.”

“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,” he said.

Along with Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan, Gabbard listed Iran as “researching and developing an array of novel, advanced or conventional missile delivery systems with nuclear and conventional payloads that could put our homeland within range.”

The Washington, DC-based Arms Control Association said US intelligence said it could take Iran until 2035 or so to develop a missile capable of hitting the US by 2025.

High level resignation

Gabbard spoke a day after a top official at his agency, Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in protest at Trump’s war with Iran.

In his resignation, Kent said Iran “did not pose an imminent threat” to the US and that Trump’s decision to enter the war contradicted his “America First” pledges.

Kent is the first high-level member of the Trump administration to step down in response to the war.

Gabbard herself has previously been a vocal opponent of indefinite military involvement in the Middle East and war with Iran. A former member of the US House of Representatives from Hawaii, she left the Democratic Party and supported Trump, in part, because of his anti-war pledges.

However, in a post on X on Tuesday, Gabbard defended Trump’s decision to go to war.

“As our commander in chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat and whether or not to take any action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country,” he said.

He said his agency’s role was to pass US intelligence to Trump.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that a terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat, and he took action based on that conclusion,” he said.