‘She’s wrong’: Trump disavows spy chief Tulsi Gabbard’s take on Iran’s nuclear programme
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US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (centre) told Congress in March that Iran was not working on a nuclear warhead.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump said on June 20 that his director of national intelligence, Ms Tulsi Gabbard, was wrong in suggesting there is no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
Mr Trump contested intelligence assessments relayed earlier in 2025 by his spy chief that Tehran was not working on a nuclear weapon when he spoke with reporters at an airport in Morristown, New Jersey.
“She’s wrong,” Mr Trump said.
In March, Ms Gabbard testified to Congress that the US intelligence community continued to judge that Tehran was not building a nuclear weapon.
“The (intelligence community) continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon,” she said.
On June 20, she said in a post on the social media platform X that: “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly.
“President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
She said the media has taken her March testimony “out of context” and was trying to “manufacture division”.
The White House has said Mr Trump would weigh involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict over the next two weeks.
On June 17, he had made similar comments to reporters about Ms Gabbard’s assessment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has justified a week of air strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets by saying Tehran was on the verge of having a warhead.
In March, Ms Gabbard described Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile as unprecedented for a state without such weapons and said the US government was watching the situation closely.
She also said that Iran had started discussing nuclear weapons in public, “emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus”.
A source with access to US intelligence reports told Reuters that the assessment presented by Ms Gabbard has not changed.
They said US spy services also judged that it would take up to three years for Iran to build a warhead with which it could hit a target of its choice.
Mr David Albright, a former United Nations nuclear inspector, questioned the revised view offered by Ms Gabbard on June 20.
Mr Albright estimated it would take Iran at least six months to produce a crude nuclear “device” that could not be delivered by a missile.
To produce a nuclear weapon that could be delivered on target by missile would take Iran at least one to two years, said Mr Albright, who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
Mr Trump has frequently disavowed the findings of US intelligence agencies, which he and his supporters have charged – without providing proof – are part of a “deep state” cabal of US officials who are opposed to his presidency.
Ms Gabbard, a fierce Trump loyalist, has been among the President’s backers who have aired such allegations.
The Republican President repeatedly clashed with US spy agencies during his first term, including over an assessment that Moscow worked to sway the 2016 presidential vote in his favour and his acceptance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials. REUTERS
