US intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard now backs Trump’s claim Iran could have nuclear weapon in ‘weeks’
Two hours after Donald Trump again said that she was wrong to cast doubt on his claim that Iran could have a nuclear weapon “within a matter of weeks”, his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, posted a statement on social media saying that she agrees with the president.
Twice this week, Trump was confronted by reporters with Gabbard’s testimony to congress in March, in which she said that the US intelligence community, made up of 18 elements she oversees, “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” On both occasions he dismissed what Gabbard had said, although it was not her assessment, but the consensus of US intelligence analysts.
Writing on X on Friday, after Trump told reporters “she’s wrong”, Gabbard blamed what she called “dishonest media” for “taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division.”
She also shared video of a longer portion of her testimony on Iran, which included the statement that Iran had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons 22 years ago.
In her testimony, Gabbard also said that the intelligence community “is closely monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Trump was reportedly irked by another recent social media post from Gabbard, a highly produced YouTube video uploaded to her personal account 10 days ago, in which she described a recent visit to Hiroshima, and warned of the “madness” of “a nuclear holocaust”.
The video featured images of Gabbard in Hiroshima (those images are uncredited, but she has returned from foreign travel in the past, for instance to Syria in 2017, with video shot by her husband, Abraham Williams, a cinematographer). It also included a section in which she described how much more powerful the current generation of nuclear warheads are by comparison.
As my colleague Hugo Lowell reported this week, some Pentagon officials believe that only a US nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Iran’s underground enrichment facility at Fordow, near the city of Qom.
In response to that report, Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, pointed out that a potential US nuclear strike on Fordow could be carried out with “a strategic B61-11 nuclear earth penetrator with a yield of 300 or 400 kilotons”. The bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons.
Key events
Judge in Newsom v. Trump to consider whether troops in LA are violating legal ban on use of US military for law enforcement
California’s effort to force Donald Trump to return control of the state’s National Guard to the governor, Gavin Newsom, returned to a federal courtroom in San Francisco on Friday.
Late Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling by US district judge Charles Breyer a week ago that Trump had acted illegally by sending in troops, and 700 marines, to police protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles.
In an 11-minute hearing on Friday, Breyer asked lawyers for both sides in Newsom, et al v. Trump, et al to submit written briefings by noon Monday on the question of whether the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits troops from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil, is being violated in Los Angeles.
Newsom said in his complaint last week that “violation of the Posse Comitatus Act is imminent, if not already underway” but Breyer postponed considering that allegation.
National Guard troops have been accompanying federal agents on some immigration raids, and marines briefly detained a civilian on the first day they deployed to protect a federal building in LA.
Just as mass protests against the Trump administration’s immigration raids are dying down in Los Angeles, JD Vance, the vice-president, has arrived in the city to visit federal agents.
Vance, a former marine who spent six months in Iraq in anon-combat role, as a public affairs officer, is expected to speak later. We will bring you updates on his remarks.
Trump dismisses US intelligence on Iran and misleads about his Iraq war stance
During a 10 minute news conference with reporters on the tarmac, en route to his golf club in New Jersey, Donald Trump was asked to explain how a potential US attack on Iran, based on disputed intelligence about the country’s nuclear program, differs from the 2003 US attack on Iraq, based on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that country did not have.
“Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction, I never thought there were”, Trump said. “And that was somewhat pre-nuclear, you know, it was the nuclear age, but nothing like it is today.”
“And it looked like I’m right about the material that they’ve gathered, already, it’s a tremendous amount of material” Trump continued, apparently referring to Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, which the nation’s leaders say it is entitled to produce for peaceful energy-generating purposes.
“I think within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter months, they were going to be able to have a nuclear weapon, and we can’t have that”, the president said.
Trump was then asked what evidence he based that claim on, given that his own US intelligence community had said Iran abandoned its drive to make a nuclear weapon in 2003, as the US attacked Iraq, and never re-started it.
“Well, then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?” Trump replied.
Informed that it was his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who testified to congress in March that the 18 US intelligence agencies she oversees “continue[s] to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
When it comes to his claims about having loudly opposed the war in Iraq, the facts show that Trump, for a decade, has been misstating his actual stance on Iraq at the time of the US invasion, when he first voiced tepid support for the war before it was launched, and then, after it went wrong, became a critic.
“I was very much opposed to Iraq”, Trump claimed on Friday. “I said it loud and clear, but I was a civilian, but I guess I got a lot of publicity, but I was very much opposed to the Iraq war, and I actually did say, ‘Don’t go in, don’t go in, don’t go in’, but I said, ‘If you’re going to go in, keep the oil’”.
In a radio interview on September 11, 2002, unearthed by Buzzfeed News in 2016, the comedian Howard Stern asked Trump if he was in favor of the US invading Iraq.
“Yeah, I guess so”, Trump responded.
As CNN reported in 2019, Trump came out against the Iraq war more than a year after it started, telling Howard Stern in April 2004: “Iraq is a terrible mistake.”
Three months later, Trump told Esquire magazine in July 2004: “it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!”
The final part of Trump’s claim about what he said on Iraq comes from a statement he first made not in 2003, but eight years later, in April 2011, when he was toying with a run to unseat Barack Obama and unveiled in an interview with the Fox host Bill O’Reilly his idea that the US should have kept Iraq’s oil.
“I’ve never said this before. This is a first, on your show” Trump said then. “In the old days, when you had wars, you win, right? You win. To the victor belong the spoils.”
You stay and protect the oil, and you take the oil and you take whatever is necessary for them and you take what’s necessary for us and we pay our self back $1.5 trillion or more. We take care of Britain, we take care of other countries that helped us, and we don’t be so stupid. You know, we’re the only country and if you look at wars over the years and I study wars, OK? My whole life is a war. You look at wars over the years. A country goes in, they conquer and they stay. We go in, we conquer, and then we leave. And we hand it to people that we don’t even know. … So, in a nutshell, we go in, we take over the second largest oil fields, and we stay.
Trump told reporters that he is looking at immigration policy steps that would allow farms to “take responsibility” for the people they hire.
“We’re looking at doing something where, in the case of good, reputable farmers, they can take responsibility for the people that they hire and let them have responsibility, because we can’t put the farms out of business,” Trump said.
He added that “at the same time, we don’t want to hurt people that aren’t criminals”, despite his repeated false claims that the majority of immigrants are criminals.
Trump said today that Europe would not be of much help in the war between Iran and Israel.
“Europe is not going to be able to help with this one,” Trump said. The president also said that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was wrong in suggesting that there is no evidence of Iran building a nuclear weapon.
European foreign ministers have urged Iran to engage with Washington over its nuclear program after talks in Geneva aimed at opening negotiations for a new nuclear deal ended with little sign of progress
Trump claims he is close to deal with Harvard
Trump says he is very close to making a deal with Harvard just moments after a federal judge ruled that the administration be blocked from preventing the university from hosting international students.
Trump wrote on Truth Social:
“Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their largescale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution. We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so. They have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations, and appear to be committed to doing what is right. If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be “mindbogglingly” HISTORIC, and very good for our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Judge blocks Trump effort to keep Harvard from hosting foreign students
A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to keep Harvard University from hosting international students.
The order from US district judge Allison Burroughs preserves the ability of Harvard to host foreign students while the case is decided. It marks another victory for the Ivy League school as it challenges multiple government sanctions amid a battle with the White House.
California’s challenge of the Trump administration’s military deployment on the streets of Los Angeles returned to a federal courtroom today in San Francisco after an appeals court handed Donald Trump a key procedural win in the case.
Friday’s hearing comes a day after the ninth circuit appellate panel allowed the president to keep control of national guard troops he deployed in response to protests over immigration raids.
The appellate decision halted a temporary restraining order from US district judge Charles Breyer, who found Trump acted illegally when he activated the soldiers over opposition from California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.
Despite the appellate setback, California’s attorneys are expected to ask Breyer for a preliminary injunction returning control of the troops in Los Angeles to Newsom.
The US supreme court has declined to speed up its consideration of whether to take up a challenge to Trump’s sweeping tariffs before the lower courts have ruled in the dispute.
The supreme court denied a request by a family-owned toy company, Learning Resources, that filed the legal challenge against Trump’s tariffs to expedite the review of the dispute by the court.
The company previously won a court ruling in May that said Trump cannot unilaterally impose tariffs using the emergency legal authority he had cited for them. That ruling is currently on hold, leaving the tariffs in place for now.
Learning Resources asked the supreme court to take the rare step of immediately hearing the case to decide the legality of the tariffs, effectively skipping over the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, where the case is pending.
Two district courts have ruled that Trump’s tariffs are not justified under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the law that Trump cited for them. Both of those cases are now on appeal. No court so far has backed the sweeping emergency tariff authority Trump has claimed.
Judge orders Mahmoud Khalil be freed from detention
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to release Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil from immigration detention, a ruling that would end his three-month detention.
Judge Michael Farbiarz made the ruling from the bench in federal court in New Jersey today. Lawyers for the Columbia graduate had asked a federal judge to immediately release him on bail from a Louisiana jail, or else transfer him to New Jersey, where he can be closer to his wife and newborn son.
The same judge had ruled earlier that the government can continue to detain the legal US resident based on allegations that he lied on his green card application. Khalil disputes the accusations that he wasn’t forthcoming on the application.
