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Tulsi Gabbard's Assessments: "Iran Is Not Building a Nuclear Weapon"

Tulsi Gabbard is a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and Army veteran who became President Trump's Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in 2025. The DNI oversees all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies and presents their joint assessment of threats to Congress every year. Gabbard spent years before taking the job warning against war with Iran. As DNI, she delivered the intelligence community's finding that Iran was not building a bomb, was overruled in public by the President, and then, in 2026, was cut out of the war's inner circle. Her record is the clearest measure of the gap between what America's spies believed and what the public was told.

Before the job: "make Iraq look like a cakewalk"​

In a 2019 Washington Post video, Gabbard said a war with Iran would make Iraq "look like a cakewalk." She called the 2020 killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani an "illegal and unconstitutional act of war" with "no justification whatsoever," and introduced the No More Presidential Wars Act (H.R. 921) and defense-bill amendments "to require congressional approval for military action against Iran," framing unilateral strikes as "an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor" (as recounted, critically, by Dan Linnaeus on X, June 10, 2025). In June 2025 she posted a video warning that "As we stand here closer to nuclear annihilation than ever before, political-elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers."

March 2025: the assessment​

Delivering the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community on March 25 to 26, 2025, Gabbard said:

"The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003."

(Axios, June 17, 2025; the delivered text as posted by Steve Moroz on X). CBS's Margaret Brennan later pressed Secretary of State Rubio on this assessment that "no weaponization order had been given," distinguishing capability from intent (Grok summary, September 23, 2026).

June 2025: "I don't care what she said"​

Israel attacked Iran on June 13, 2025. Aboard Air Force One days later, the President was asked about his intelligence chief's finding: "I don't care what she said. I think they were very close to having it." (Axios, June 17, 2025; TIME). Gabbard told CNN on June 18: "President Trump was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media don't care to actually read what I said." Vice President Vance put out a statement calling her "an essential member of our national security team" (Katie Pavlich on X, June 18, 2025). Four days later the United States bombed Iran.

Supporters of the war responded by attacking her. A pro-war analyst wrote that her assessment "reverted to the pre-2018 consensus," and set against it FDD's Andrea Stricker and David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (Linnaeus on X, June 18, 2025). When the head of American intelligence reported that Iran was not building a bomb, the think tanks aligned with Israel supplied the counter-experts (see FDD).

Shut out of the room​

According to an administration official who spoke to The Grayzone in June 2025, "top officials who have questioned the logic of attacking Iran, such as Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her deputy, former CIA officer and director for the National Counter-Terrorism Center Joe Kent, have been excluded from meetings by White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles" (as pasted by @SMO_VZ on X, June 21, 2025). Joe Kent later described the war's inner circle in the photos from Mar-a-Lago the night of the 2026 strikes: Rubio, Ratcliffe, Hegseth, Gen. Caine, and Susie Wiles, a circle "shaved down a good deal" (see Joe Kent).

March 2026: "no efforts since then to try to rebuild"​

On March 18, 2026, three weeks into the second war, Gabbard testified at the Senate's worldwide threats hearing. Her written testimony said that after the June 2025 strikes "there have been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability." She did not read that line aloud, and Senator Mark Warner accused her of omitting parts that "contradict Trump" (Al Jazeera, March 18, 2026; TIME). The President had launched the war saying Iran "attempted to rebuild their nuclear program."

Senator Jon Ossoff asked the question directly:

Ossoff: "Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime?" Gabbard: "The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president. It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat." Ossoff: "It is precisely your responsibility. This is the worldwide threats hearing where, as you noted in your opening testimony quote, you represent the ic's assessment of threats."

(X news summary of the hearing, March 18, 2026; about 235,000 posts). The same summary noted she distanced herself from a Trump PAC fundraising email promising donors private briefings. One critic summarized the intelligence record: the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, Gabbard's testimony, the IAEA, and a Congressional Research Service report all indicated Iran "was not seeking to develop a weapon at the time of the 2026 strikes" (@ddtmatter on X, September 23, 2026).

What her record shows​

The intelligence community's position never supported the claim that Iran was racing to a bomb. What changed between March 2025 and February 2026 was not the intelligence. It was who was in the room. Gabbard's refusal to call the threat imminent, and her deference to the President on the word, is the sound of an intelligence chief caught between her agencies' findings and a war decided elsewhere.

Status: Tulsi Gabbard — Alive. Donald Trump, JD Vance, Jon Ossoff, Mark Warner, Susie Wiles, and Joe Kent are alive.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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