US Intel official says Iran

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government’s top intelligence official told lawmakers Wednesday that Iran’s regime “appears to be intact but largely degraded” but repeatedly dodged questions about whether President Donald Trump had been warned about the consequences of the weeks-long war, including Iran’s attacks on Gulf nations and its effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, also stated in prepared remarks before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the U.S. strikes on Iran last year had “destroyed” Iran’s nuclear program and that there had been no effort since to rebuild that capability.

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The statement was notable given Trump’s repeated claims that a war with Iran was necessary to prevent what he claimed was an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic. Gabbard pointedly said that conclusion was the president’s alone, as she declined to directly answer whether the intelligence community had also assessed that Iran’s nuclear system posed an imminent risk to the United States.

“It is not the responsibility of the intelligence community to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” he said at one point.

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia responded: “It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.”

The testimony came in the first of two congressional hearings held each year to offer the public a glimpse into the largely secret operations of government intelligence agencies and the threats they face.

This week’s hearings come at a time of scrutiny over the war with Iran and heightened concerns about terrorism in the country after recent attacks on a Michigan synagogue and a Virginia university. Wednesday’s hearing also came a day after Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent said he could not “in good conscience” support war and did not agree that Iran posed an imminent threat.

But the hours-long hearing offered few revelations from Gabbard, who repeatedly declined to discuss conversations with Trump or other senior intelligence officials who testified.

“I am very disappointed,” said an exasperated Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It’s the only time of year the public can hear them in this type of environment.”

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Gabbard avoided questions about intelligence given to Trump

A frequent line of questioning for Democrats: What intelligence, if any, had Trump been given about the potential consequences of the war? Trump, for example, has said he was surprised that Iran responded to US attacks by attacking Arab nations and has been grappling with the economic impact of effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, a body of water that connects the Persian Gulf to the world’s oceans and a vital passage for oil and gas.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on

But Trump’s plan to secure the waterway is unclear, especially after he said this week that NATO and most other allies had rejected his calls to help secure it. Iran has said the strait is open except to the United States and its allies.

Democrats got few direct answers when they pressed administration officials on what Trump understood about that possibility: Gabbard said she would not divulge her conversations with him, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe noted that she had been in countless briefings with the president.

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“We’re trying to determine whether the president knew what the downside was to closing the Strait of Hormuz,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. “Did you know this was going to happen or did you just ignore it?”

Gabbard appeared to try to find a balance between emphasizing the intelligence community’s views on the risks from Iran (she said, for example, that internal tensions would continue to rise even if the regime’s leadership remained intact) and not fully echoing the president’s arguments about an imminent threat.

At one point, Warner noted that Gabbard, in her written statement prepared and presented to the committee, said Iran’s nuclear enrichment program had been destroyed in attacks last year, but her opening remarks Wednesday did not use that language.

He asked if he had omitted that reference to conform to Trump’s claims of an imminent threat. Gabbard insisted that she had skipped part of her written statement for the sake of time.

Trump has tried to distance himself from Kent. Ratcliffe tried to do the same on Wednesday when asked whether intelligence services supported Kent’s assessment that Iran was not an imminent threat. “The intelligence reflects the opposite,” Ratcliffe said.

Questions about other attacks and Gabbard’s presence in an FBI search

Gabbard and Ratcliffe answered most of the questions, but other witnesses included the heads of the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel, who was pressed about the terrorist threat amid a series of attacks this month. They include a man with a terrorism conviction who opened fire inside a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia and a Lebanese-born man in Michigan who drove his car into a synagogue.

One issue that received no attention: a deadly missile attack on an elementary school in Iran, which people familiar with the matter have said the United States likely carried out as a result of outdated intelligence information.

In addition to Iran, Gabbard came under pressure for her presence in an FBI search in January at the main election center in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized voter data related to the 2020 presidential election. Her appearance in a national law enforcement operation drew attention given that Gabbard’s office is intended to focus directly on foreign threats.

Warner described his appearance there as part of an “organized effort to misuse his national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and potentially provide a pretext for the president’s unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming election.”

Gabbard responded that she was present at the search at the president’s request but did not participate, although she later said she helped supervise it.

The House Intelligence Committee will hold its own hearing on threats on Thursday.

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News writers Mike Catalini, Ben Finley and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.