MIA: Where is Tulsi?
On Tuesday, during a flash interview with the press on board Air Force One, President Trump nonchalantly disregarded US intelligence assessments regarding Iran to align himself with Israel. POTUS bluntly rejected the conclusion made by the selected United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, who provided a succinct judgment during her congressional testimony in late March, during which she emphasised the intelligence community (IC) findings regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
VIDEO: Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, March 2025, extract of Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony on Iran’s Nuclear capability (Source: PBS NewsHour)
Tensions emerged early on Tuesday when a CNN journalist on Air Force One inquired of Trump regarding Gabbard’s statement made before Congress in March, asserting that Iran was not pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon. Trump seemed to disregard not only her evaluation, but also the assessment provided by the intelligence community on this matter.
VIDEO: Trump “doesn’t care what she (Tulsi Gabbard) has to say” (Source: Freddie Ponton. X account)
Trump’s disregard for Gabbard and the office of the DNI on such a pivotal issue, and on the eve of war, severely comprises the objectivity and integrity of her position, Normally, this situation should prompt the question of whether the intelligence official in question should resign from her post, and in the interests of the American people (and the world) go public – in order to reiterate the findings of her assessment, in this case, whether or not Iran has, or is actually pursuing to acquisition of nuclear weapons.
We are yet to be told why Gabbard was not present nor invited to the crucial Camp David meeting last Sunday. However, soon after her absence from the President’s retreat, where Trump had convened his entire top foreign policy team, Gabbard posted an unusual video in which she cautioned about the risks of nuclear war, stating:
“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,”
VIDEO: ‘We are closer to annihilation’: Tulsi Gabbard’s chilling nuclear war warning (Source: The Economic Times)
All the evidence strongly suggestions that Gabbard’s timely video was a clear reaction to her being snubbed by President Trump.
The absence of the DNI at Camp David was seen as a sign that US policy is shifting towards a position against Iran. While Gabbard’s statement in her alarming nuclear war warning video may have referred to the US engagement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, it is difficult to overlook the fact that the US approach to Iran is changing swiftly, compelling the Trump administration to undertake significant actions, which Tulsi may not fully support. In a report, Politico confirms that Gabbard’s video emerged a few days following the meeting between an influential lobbying group of GOP hawks and Trump at the White House, where they urged him to endorse Israel’s military actions against Iran. From the perspective of Trump and certain individuals within his inner circle, Gabbard appeared to caution him against permitting Israel to launch an attack on Iran. Gabbard’s remarks aligned with the views of numerous MAGA leaders, who believe that increased U.S. engagement in the Israel-Iran conflicts could entangle America in a broader regional and potentially global war. Although it is undeniable that Gabbard may have lost a few allies in the West Wing, and that her influence may be slightly diminished, it would be unwise to think she isn’t without allies in the administration.
This incident also follows an established petulant pattern of Trump isolating, attacking, before ultimately removing any member of his inner circle who are seen to disagree with him on any policy.
Discussions concerning the intelligence related to Iran’s timeline for developing a nuclear weapon will be scrutinised if the United States proceeds with a military strike that could initiate a new foreign conflict, potentially altering the dynamics of the Middle East and redefining a Trump administration that was anticipated to conclude the era of “forever wars” for the United States. For now, the biggest question is that of ethics and integrity, and whether Tulsi Gabbard will take a stand against the man who has eroded the last traces of independent intelligence analysis.
More details have since emerged to shed valuable light on this important story…
Branko Marcetic reports for Responsible Statecraft…
Tulsi said Iran not building nukes. One Senator after another ignored her.
Disregarding the Director of National Intelligence seems like an odd thing to do unless you really want to go to war
The U.S. intelligence agencies’ Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) is billed as an opportunity “for the American people to receive an unvarnished and unbiased account of the real and present dangers that our nation faces.” That’s according to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who personally presided over a public hearing this year to hear its conclusions.
It’s too bad neither he nor almost any other senator who sits on the committee seemed to pay attention to it, if current discourse over the Israel-Iran war is anything to go by.
On March 25, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard delivered the U.S. Intelligence Community’s (IC) collective conclusions covering a broad swath of national security issues and geographic areas — including the threat posed by Iran and its possible development of a nuclear weapon.
“The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” she told the committee bluntly. Gabbard was echoing an assessment that U.S. intelligence agencies have been making since 2007.
Yet despite this testimony, most of the committee members have issued statements over the past days and weeks that have entirely ignored this assessment, instead painting a picture of an Iran speeding toward a nuclear bomb, and Israel’s self-proclaimed “preemptive” war against Iran as an unavoidable and understandable act of self-defense.
That includes Cotton himself, who has, since hearing that testimony, repeatedly issued statements and given interviews that make reference to Iran’s supposed “development of nuclear weapons,” its “nuclear weapons program,” and that it was “on the path to nuclear weapons.”
In a recent Face the Nation interview, Cotton equated Iran’s uranium enrichment with a “nuclear weapons program.” A week ago, he claimed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “confirmed that Iran’s terrorist regime is actively working towards a nuclear weapon,” wildly twisting Hegseth’s actual, heavily qualified response to a point-blank question about whether Tehran was building a nuke: “There are plenty of indications that they have been moving their way toward something that looks a lot like a nuclear weapon.”
This week, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) went further and actually cited his position “as a member of the Intelligence Committee” to make the charge that “independent experts had “time and time again” determined that Iran was “using that program for military purposes” and “very quickly rushing towards the development, we have to assume, of a nuclear weapon” — even though Young had been told three months earlier that U.S. intelligence agencies believe the exact opposite.
Elsewhere, Young has pointed to “Iran’s nuclear ambitions” to justify backing Israel’s attack.
“This Iranian regime has clearly been preparing to make nuclear weapons for years,” read a statement from Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who, as Israel launched its attack, said that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, it’s just simply gotten to that point.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) has similarly called the nuclear program “a very real threat to the United States,” and, while tweeting out his support of the Israeli war, claimed Iranian leaders had “advanced their nuclear weapon capacity,” insisting they “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
“A nuclear Iran was always an unacceptable outcome,” tweeted Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who backed Israel “tak[ing] action to ensure Iran could not add a nuclear weapon to its arsenal.” Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has reposted a spate of tweets claiming that Iran was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon and needed to be immediately neutralised, and at one point approvingly quoted Trump that “you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.”
It was a little better on the Democratic side of the aisle. “It’s unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” tweeted Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) as Israeli bombs rained down on Tehran. Elsewhere, Kelly has said that Iran has “been on this trajectory for a while, to be able to build a nuclear weapon,” and suggested he might back a direct U.S. attack on Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, because he “would like to see Iran’s nuclear capability to be completely disarmed.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime Democratic hawk on Iran, referenced “Iran’s nuclear ambitions” in the same breadth that he announced his support for “Israel’s right to defend itself” last week.
“I have long believed that the Iranian regime must not acquire a nuclear weapon,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), but “Iran has proceeded rapidly with its nuclear program,” necessitating self-defense from Israel. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) warned in the midst of the war that “Iran has been developing nuclear capability,” and that because “ it must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon,” she would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
These 10 senators constituted the majority of those who attended the Intelligence Committee hearing that day and heard Gabbard’s testimony, which said the exact opposite of what many of them are saying now.
Those senators who were absent, and so presumably would have been later briefed on what had been reported in the hearing, mostly all still ended up using the same misleading rhetoric about an Iran inexorably barreling toward a nuclear weapon, including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) (“We know for a fact that the Iranians are increasingly enriching uranium for the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon”), Jim Risch (R-ID) (“I pray for the people of Israel and support its right to defend itself against a nuclear Iran”), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) (“Iran’s sprint to become a nuclear threat to America and our allies”), and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), (“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”).
Only a few, specifically Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), Jerry Moran (D-Kan.), and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) simply haven’t put out any public statements on the issue at all. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), meanwhile, has been highly critical of what he called Israel’s “reckless escalation,” and has warned that “the drive for nuclear weapons, I think, by the Iranians, might ironically even be accelerated” by the attack.
Meanwhile, as the Trump administration considered heeding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal to join Israel’s attack, additional cold water was poured on these claims. Four sources told CNN that intelligence agencies continue to believe Iran was not actively pursuing a nuke and that, even if they were, it would be three years away, while the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. officials had rejected Israeli intelligence that supposedly proved Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Trump himself has dismissed Gabbard’s testimony (“I don’t care what she said”) and reportedly excluded the more war-skeptical DNI from a critical national security meeting on Tuesday.
All of it paints a very worrisome picture of a Washington driving headlong into a new Middle East war — one where lawmakers and the president have actively chosen to ignore the intelligence they have been provided by their own intelligence community.
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