On June 20, Trump rebuked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s finding that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
“She’s wrong,” Trump said.
Reuters
While Gabbard has acknowledged Iran’s vast stores of enriched uranium and increasingly aggressive nuclear rhetoric, it did not change her original assessment that Iran was not close to developing a fully functional nuclear bomb. This did not stop the White House from releasing a doctored video that cut out the part of Gabbard’s testimony to the Senate in which she stated that Iran was not close to developing a nuke.
Gabbard dismissed claims regarding a rift between her and Trump. In reality, there is significant animosity between Gabbard and the West Wing. Many of its officials do not believe that she is up for the job as Director of National Intelligence. Trump has also recently viewed her as “off-message,” especially after she released a strange three-minute video in which she claimed that the world was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust because of the “political elite and warmongers.” Trump perceived the video as a subtle criticism of him allowing Israel to hit Iran in a preemptive strike.
In another sign of Gabbard’s falling star within the world of MAGA, Gabbard was not present alongside Trump and his top national security officials for a June 8 Camp David meeting about the Israel-Iran War. Gabbard was on National Guard duty that day, though her absence for such an important meeting remains baffling.
Because of Trump’s rebuke, Gabbard has now said that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon within weeks. Some experts have noted that Iran may be able to develop and launch a crude nuclear weapon in a much shorter span of time than the “years” Gabbard had previously said it would take, though it may not be functional. The intelligence community largely concurs that it would take up to three years for Iran to create a functional nuclear weapon.
Trump has a history of disputing intelligence findings that are politically inexpedient. In the 2018 Helsinki summit, he infamously sided with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin over the intelligence community on the matter of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
