At the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual Worldwide Threat Assessment hearing on March 18, 2026, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was asked directly whether the intelligence community assessed that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury. She refused to answer.
Senator Jon Ossoff asked: “Was it the assessment of the intelligence community that there was an imminent nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime? Yes or no?” Gabbard responded: “Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.” She deflected repeatedly, despite the fact that assessing threats is the core function of the intelligence community she leads.
More damning was what Gabbard's own written testimony revealed, and what she left out of her spoken remarks. Her prepared statement said there had been “no efforts” by Iran to rebuild its enrichment capability after the June 2025 strikes. Ossoff asked, “That's the assessment of the intelligence community?” Gabbard replied, “Yes.” That contradicted Trump, who told Congress in his State of the Union address, days before launching the war, that Iran was “starting it all over.”
Gabbard dropped the enrichment language from her spoken opening statement, an omission Bloomberg reported. The assessment stayed in the written version of her statement, which the committee posted on its website, and she confirmed it aloud only under Ossoff's questioning. That assessment cut against the imminent nuclear threat the White House had cited as one of its justifications for the war.
The hearing came one day after Joe Kent resigned as counterterrorism director, writing that Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation.” Gabbard did not say that. She told the committee it is “not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” leaving that call to the president, even as she confirmed the assessment that Iran had made no efforts to rebuild its enrichment capability.