What Happened at the Hearing
On Wednesday, March 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee for the first time since the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on February 28. The occasion was the intelligence community’s annual worldwide threats hearing. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Lt. General James Adams, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified alongside her. The hearing was expected to be procedural. It was not.
The central question senators pressed on was precise: did the intelligence community formally assess that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat before the war began? The White House had cited an “imminent nuclear threat” in its public statement on March 1 as one of the justifications for military action. Senators wanted to know whether that characterisation reflected the IC’s actual position.
Gabbard declined to answer directly. When Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia asked her to confirm or deny the imminent threat assessment, she replied: “The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.”
Ossoff pushed back, noting that Gabbard was present specifically to represent the IC’s independent assessment, not to defer threat determinations to the executive. The exchange set the tone for the rest of the hearing.
The Contradiction in Writing vs. Speech
Before the hearing, Gabbard had submitted eight pages of written testimony to the committee. According to that document, the IC’s position on Iran’s nuclear programme was unambiguous. Her written testimony stated: “As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer” — referring to the June 2025 joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities — “Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.”
When Gabbard delivered her opening statement aloud, she omitted that section entirely.
Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the committee, raised it directly, asking why she had skipped the passage. Her explanation: time was running long and she moved past some portions. Warner was not satisfied. “So you chose to omit the parts that contradict the president,” he said.
Gabbard denied that characterisation. Later in the hearing, when Ossoff pressed her to confirm the IC’s written assessment, she acknowledged it on the record — Iran’s enrichment programme had been severely damaged and, according to the IC’s latest assessment, was not being actively rebuilt.
According to her written testimony, Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was obliterated after June 2025 — with no confirmed effort since then to rebuild it.
The IAEA’s Director General, Rafael Grossi, stated on March 3 that the agency had found no evidence of an active nuclear weapons programme in Iran. Trump, separately, told congressional leaders on March 4 that Iran “would’ve had a nuclear weapon” within two weeks had the US not acted. The IC’s written assessment, as presented in Gabbard’s own submitted testimony, does not appear to support that timeline.
Gabbard did note that the IC assessed Iran was “trying to recover” from the June 2025 strike damage and had continued to resist IAEA compliance. That is a meaningful distinction from a conclusion of imminent weaponisation — one the White House’s March 1 statement did not draw.
Kent’s Resignation the Day Before
Gabbard’s testimony came one day after Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center and her direct subordinate, resigned his post and published his reasons on X. In his resignation statement, Kent wrote that he could not “in good conscience” continue in the role and was explicit about his reasoning: “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent is a retired Army Special Forces officer with eleven combat deployments and a record of alignment with the Trump administration. His resignation stands as the most senior public dissent from within the administration over the war to date. Trump, asked about it by reporters, said: “I always thought he was weak on security.” Trump adviser Taylor Budowich called Kent a “crazed egomaniac” in a public statement.
Gabbard, who had publicly championed Kent’s nomination and called him a “patriot” following his Senate confirmation, did not respond to the substance of his claims. Her statement on X reiterated that the president is “responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.” She neither disputed Kent’s intelligence assessment nor offered a public defence of the administration’s stated rationale for the war.
Ratcliffe vs. Gabbard: Two Versions
Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe sat at the same witness table. Their accounts of the pre-war threat picture diverged noticeably. Ratcliffe testified that Iran “posed an immediate threat” at the time the US decided to act, pointing to what he described as an Iranian missile buildup during the course of ongoing diplomatic negotiations. He also disputed the claims in Kent’s resignation statement directly, saying the intelligence supported the opposite conclusion.
Gabbard offered no comparable assertion. She declined to characterise the pre-war threat as imminent and confirmed the IC’s nuclear assessment — that Iran’s enrichment programme had been severely damaged and showed no confirmed signs of active reconstruction — only after sustained questioning. Senator Warner, speaking to CNN after the hearing, said: “Her answer is not credible.”
Gabbard was also asked about the ODNI’s 2026 annual threat assessment, which for the first time since 2017 contained no reference to foreign interference in US elections — a notable omission given that midterms are scheduled this year. Asked by Warner whether the IC had concluded there was no foreign electoral threat, Gabbard said the report “matches the prioritisation of threats” and did not elaborate further.
Editorial View · Santhosh Vishwamitra
When the Intelligence Chief Skips Her Own Written Assessment, That Raises Questions
Gabbard submitted written testimony to the Senate stating that Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme was destroyed after June 2025 and had not been actively rebuilt. Then she delivered her opening remarks and left that section out. Her explanation — that time was running short — raises obvious questions when the omitted passage is precisely the one that sits in tension with the White House’s stated justification for going to war.
The administration cited an imminent nuclear threat. The IC’s written assessment, presented in Gabbard’s own submitted testimony, describes a programme that was severely damaged and showed no confirmed signs of reconstruction. Those two positions are difficult to reconcile. Ratcliffe made an effort at the hearing to close that gap. Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, largely declined to engage with it. That matters for a basic reason: the intelligence community’s role is to give Congress an independent account of the threat environment. Deferring the threat determination entirely to the president is not a position — it is an abdication of that function.
Kent’s resignation adds a dimension that cannot be set aside easily. He is not an outside critic. He is a decorated combat veteran, a Trump appointee confirmed on a party-line vote, and a senior official with direct access to the classified intelligence record. In his resignation statement, he said Iran posed no imminent threat. The administration says otherwise. The March 18 hearing did not resolve that contradiction. If anything, it made it harder to ignore.
The Bottom Line
The IC’s written assessment, as presented in Gabbard’s own submitted testimony, describes an Iranian nuclear programme that was destroyed in June 2025 and showed no confirmed signs of active reconstruction. The president told Congress Iran was two weeks from a bomb. The gap between those two positions is not a minor discrepancy. It is the central unresolved question of how and why this war began — and Wednesday’s hearing brought it no closer to resolution.
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Santhosh Vishwamitra
Founder, SVM Labs
Santhosh Vishwamitra is the founder of Inside Stories — Where Global Politics Meets Perspective.
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