Tulsi Gabbard tells Senate panel US strikes on Iran are strategic success | US-Israel war on Iran

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence who sold “No War with Iran” T-shirts in 2019, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that U.S. strikes against Iran had been a strategic success.

“I would like to remind those watching that what I present here today conveys the intelligence community’s assessment of the threats to American citizens, our homeland and our interests,” Gabbard told the committee, “and not my personal views.”

Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the U.S.-Israeli campaign have already killed 13 U.S. service members and injured about 200 others, cost taxpayers billions of dollars and scrambled global supply chains for oil, fertilizer and aluminum. This week, when Donald Trump asked his allies for help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the call went unanswered.

According to the annual Global Threat Assessment report, Iran’s conventional military projection capabilities have been “largely destroyed,” Gabbard said, and Iran’s strategic position “significantly degraded.” But the regime appears intact, and since internal protests have been violently suppressed and thousands have been killed, if it survives, Iran “would likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missile and drone forces.”

In last year’s assessment, the intelligence community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, although he was likely pressured to do so.” Gabbard said at that hearing that the intelligence community believes that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan have researched and developed new advanced missile systems “with nuclear and conventional payloads that bring our homeland within range.”

When Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff asked about Iran’s nuclear program, Gabbard confirmed that the intelligence community believed it had been “wiped out” in last June’s strike — a conclusion she omitted in her opening statement — and that Iran had made no effort to rebuild since.

But when asked repeatedly whether Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat before the strikes, she did an about-face. “It is not up to the intelligence community to determine what constitutes an imminent threat or not,” she said. “It depends on the president, depending on the volume of information he receives.”

This response sat uncomfortable next to Trump’s own Truth Social video announcing the war, in which he told the American people that the campaign was aimed at eliminating the imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime.

The 2026 assessment also noted that missile threats to the U.S. homeland are expected to increase from about 3,000 to more than 16,000 by 2035, that North Korean hackers stole $2 billion in cryptocurrency last year, and that the Islamic State is actively rebuilding in Syria.

But it was what the assessment did not say that sparked the strongest reactions. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, noted that for the first time since 2017, the assessment contained no mention of adversarial attempts to influence U.S. elections.

“I don’t believe this omission means the threat is gone,” Warner said. “That means the intelligence community is no longer allowed to talk honestly about it. »

In response to Warner’s questions, Gabbard said she did not “participate” in the FBI’s seizure of 2020 election records in Fulton County, but was present “at the President’s request and to work with the FBI to observe this action that was long overdue.”

Warner had asked Gabbard what she was doing there, given that the criminal warrant “did not show any foreign interference or ties. In fact, the warrant was based on conspiracy theories that have already been examined and rejected numerous times.” Warner was one of the earliest and most vocal critics of the FBI’s action in Fulton County.

Gabbard asserted that her leadership had the authority to investigate threats of foreign interference in the election, referencing a letter sent to Congress shortly after the FBI raid. She said Trump sent her to observe, but added that she had no prior knowledge of the contents of the warrant affidavit and that she “did not know that the president had knowledge of an affidavit before it was served.”

“Then why was he sending you to Fulton County?” » Warner asked.

“This happened the day the FBI approved their warrant, approved by a local judge, and they began executing it,” she responded before quickly moving on to other topics.