United States President Donald Trump has said his director of national intelligence was “wrong” when she testified that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not re-authorised the country’s suspended nuclear weapons programme.
The comments come after Trump earlier this week cast doubt on Tulsi Gabbard’s March 25 report to Congress, in which she reiterated the US intelligence community’s assessment. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, “I don’t care” that the intelligence community’s finding contradicted his own claims, saying Iran was in the late stages of developing a nuclear weapon.
But speaking on Friday, Trump went further.
A reporter asked, “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence.”
The president responded, “Then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”
“Your DNI [director of national intelligence], Tulsi Gabbard,” the reporter replied.
“She’s wrong,” Trump said.
Gabbard appeared to come to Trump’s defence later on Friday.
“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly,” she wrote in a social media post. “President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
However, that statement does not contradict her earlier assessment that Iran is not building a weapon. No known US intelligence assessment concludes that Iran is weaponising its nuclear programme.
It is extremely rare for a US president to openly contradict the country’s intelligence community, with critics accusing Trump of flagrantly disregarding evidence to justify potential direct US involvement in the fighting, according to Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.
“This is not just one person, one team saying something,” Bishara said. “It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. That he would dismiss them … it’s just astounding.”
Speaking on Friday, Trump also appeared to downplay the prospect of the US brokering a ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel, saying he “might” support such a deal, while adding, “Israel’s doing well in terms of war, and I think you would say that Iran is doing less well.”
“It’s hard to make that request right now. When someone’s winning, it’s harder than when they’re losing,” he added.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou Castro noted that Trump was “really making a point that he’s not going to make an effort to ask Israel to ease up on its aerial bombing of Iranian targets”.
“It seems that Trump is very squarely on Israel’s side as things are progressing, and … it appears that he is not leaning towards the diplomacy route, though, again, he is giving himself that two weeks’ time to make a final decision,” she said.
Trump on Thursday said he would take two weeks to decide the US response to the conflict. Experts say the decision would likely be transformative.
The US is seen as one of the few countries with the leverage to pressure Israel to step back from the brink of wider-scale regional war.
At the same time, the involvement of the US military is seen as key to Israel’s stated mission of completely dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme, which hinges on destroying the underground Fordow enrichment plant.
A successful attack on the facility would require both Washington’s 30,000-pound (13,000kg) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the B-2 bombers needed to deliver it.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump also downplayed the potential role of European countries in de-escalating the situation. That came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met the top diplomats from France, the UK, Germany and the EU in Geneva.
“Europe is not going to be able to help,” the US president said.
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