US intelligence has concluded that Iran is not rebuilding nuclear enrichment facilities destroyed last year by the United States and Israel, contradicting a key justification President Donald Trump gave for his ongoing military campaign against the Islamic republic.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Trump ally who serves as director of national intelligence, delivered the assessment to the Senate intelligence committee on Wednesday, offering mixed signals about the backdrop and outcomes of three weeks of warfare.
“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was obliterated,” Gabbard said in prepared testimony, referring to the June 2025 US attack. “There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”
However, Gabbard did not repeat the conclusion when speaking before cameras. When pressed by a Democratic senator, she said she had not had enough time to read the full testimony at the hearing, though she did not refute the written assessment.
Trump has repeatedly said he ordered the attack on Iran alongside Israel on 28 February because of an “imminent threat”. After the June 2025 bombing, Trump said the United States had completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear sites. Yet since launching his latest military campaign, he has maintained that Tehran was nonetheless weeks away from producing a nuclear bomb and that he had to act.
The UN nuclear watchdog and most observers have not supported the finding of an imminent nuclear bomb by Iran, which was negotiating with Trump’s envoys on a deal in the days before the attack.
John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, told senators when asked about the negotiations: “It was very clear that Iran, while they were talking, they had no intentions of following through.”
Former anti-war advocate now leads intelligence
Gabbard had been an outspoken opponent of war with Iran during her time as a Democratic congresswoman. One of her senior aides, Joseph Kent, resigned in protest on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying that Iran posed no “imminent threat” and that Trump was misled by Israel and media outlets.
Democrats attacked Gabbard over the war, saying she had not proven that Iran posed any threat beyond what it has since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“President Trump said, we are not the policemen of the world. He ran on that,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennet said. “Now he’s turned us into the world’s policeman, into its jury, into its judge, into its executioner.”
In her remarks, Gabbard said Iran had suffered heavy blows in the weeks of attacks, which included the killing of the longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but that the Islamic republic was still functioning.
The US intelligence community “assesses the regime in Iran to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” Gabbard said. “If a hostile regime survives, it will likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”
Russia maintains advantage in Ukraine
Gabbard also predicted that Russia would continue pressing its four-year invasion of Ukraine, a war that Trump had vowed to end upon taking office, largely by pressing Kyiv to compromise.
US intelligence “assesses that Russia has maintained the upper hand in the war against Ukraine,” Gabbard said. “US-led negotiations between Moscow and Kiev are ongoing. Until such an agreement is met, Moscow is likely to continue fighting a slow war.”
She warned that the United States faced a threat if there were an “escalatory spiral” in Ukraine or elsewhere, which could potentially lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
Gabbard said China was “rapidly” modernising its military with a goal of being able to seize Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing. However, US intelligence “assesses that China likely prefers to set the conditions for an eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan short of conflict.”
Trump plans to travel to China in the coming weeks, a trip he delayed due to the war in the Middle East.
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