Day: June 21, 2025

INTEL BE DAMNED: Donald Trump’s blunt rejection of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon—“I don’t care what she said”—sends a chilling message to the U.S. intelligence community: Don’t contradict the president. 

The remark, which appears to be driven by Trump’s personal feelings toward his DNI (see below), revives concerns from Trump’s first term, when he famously declared in 2018 that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials of election meddling over his own intelligence community’s findings. 

In March, Gabbard told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” 

Vice President JD Vance defended Gabbard. “First off, Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then,” Vance said on X.  

What changed? Not much, according to The New York Times. The U.S. intelligence community continues to believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to make a nuclear bomb, although it does have a large stockpile of uranium. Senior intelligence officials believe that an American military attack would likely push Iran to build one, the Times reported. 

Trump also appeared to parrot Israel’s hawkish estimate of Iran’s capabilities to build a bomb when he told reporters on Air Force One, “I think they were very close to having one.”

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