Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sidestepped a pointed question about whether or not, as the White House suggested, there was an “imminent nuclear threat” from Iran during a Senate hearing on worldwide threats.
Instead, she underscored the threat of Iran’s intent to obtain nuclear weapons, something she previously doubted, and argued that it is President Trump’s decision to determine the imminence of a given threat.
“The intelligence community assessed that Iran maintained the intention to rebuild and to continue to grow their nuclear enrichment capability,” Gabbard told Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who grilled her on the White House’s statements.
Ossoff had quoted the Intelligence Community’s conclusion that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” something with which Gabbard concurred. He then repeatedly pressed her on whether Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat, but she consistently dodged.
“Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president,” she said.
The Peach State Democrat quickly shot back, “False.”
“This is the worldwide threats hearing where you present to Congress national intelligence, timely, objective, and independent of political considerations,” he fired back. “You’ve stated today that the intelligence community’s assessment is that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated and ‘there had been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.’”
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Gabbard reiterated that it’s not the “intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat.”
But Ossoff, widely seen as the most vulnerable incumbent Democratic senator heading into the 2026 midterms, countered that it’s “precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat” to the US.
The two went back and forth a few times before Ossoff then pivoted to Gabbard’s visit to an election center in Georgia last month.
At the start of the Wednesday “Annual Worldwide Threats Assessment Hearing” before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gabbard briefed senators on the current state of Iran, noting that the theocratic regime “appears to be intact but largely degraded.”
