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One of US President Donald Trump’s central justifications for his war on Iran has been blown out of the water by his own intelligence community, which has concluded that Tehran is not rebuilding the nuclear enrichment capacity destroyed in last year’s US-Israeli attack.
In written testimony submitted on 18 March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: “As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.” The assessment undercuts Trump’s repeated claims that Iran posed an “imminent threat” and was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
When questioned by senators, however, Gabbard did not repeat that conclusion orally and declined to say whether Iran had posed an imminent nuclear threat, saying that judgment was for the president.
The discrepancy is significant because Trump has invoked the threat of an Iranian nuclear breakout to justify continued military action. Gabbard’s written testimony, by contrast, indicates that US intelligence has not found evidence that Iran is reconstructing the enrichment infrastructure destroyed in the attack.
READ: Trump: Israel attacked Iran’s south pars gas field without US or Qatari involvement
The development came as Joseph Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, citing his opposition to the war. In his resignation letter to Trump, Kent wrote: “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent added that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign” that “wholly undermined” Trump’s America First platform and encouraged war with Iran. “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States,” he wrote, adding that claims there was “a clear path to a swift victory” were “a lie”.
In the letter, Kent also said: “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
Kent’s resignation places fresh pressure on the administration’s account of the war, coming days after Gabbard’s testimony indicated that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capability. Together, the two developments are likely to intensify scrutiny of Trump’s claim that military action was necessary to confront an imminent threat.
OPINION: Trump and Hegseth cannot define the truth of the US-Israeli War on Iran
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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