Trump, US Intelligence Split on Iran, Gabbard Sidelined

By Staff, Agencies

A sharp divide has opened between US President Donald Trump and the US intelligence community over Iran’s nuclear progress, as Trump asserts that Tehran is just "weeks away" from acquiring a nuclear weapon, a claim not supported by current US assessments.

According to intelligence officials and Senate sources cited by NBC, the official US intelligence assessment on Iran remains unchanged since March, when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran had not decided to pursue a nuclear bomb, despite holding a large stockpile of enriched uranium.

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner, confirmed this position again on Wednesday, stating that he received an updated briefing reaffirming that conclusion this week.

“So far, at least, the intelligence community has stood by its conclusion that Iran is not moving toward a nuclear weapon,” Warner told reporters. “If that has changed, we need to see the facts.”

US President Trump, however, contradicted that stance during remarks on Wednesday, claiming Iran was just "a few weeks" away from having a nuclear weapon.

"Israeli" Occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the warning, telling Fox News that Iran was carrying out a “secret plan” to build a bomb within months.

“The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear,” Netanyahu said. “They were marching very quickly... certainly less than a year.”

Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate appointed by Trump to lead the intelligence community, has largely remained out of the public eye since her March testimony before Congress, which emphasized that Iran had not yet taken the decisive step to build a weapon.

In that testimony, she stated that Iran possessed uranium enriched far beyond civilian levels but was not actively weaponizing it.