Gabbard: Iran Government Still Intact  03/19 06:13

   The U.S. government's top intelligence official told lawmakers Wednesday 
that Iran's government "appears to be intact but largely degraded" yet 
repeatedly dodged questions about whether President Donald Trump had been 
warned about the fallout from the weeks-old war, including Iran's attacks on 
Gulf nations and its effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's top intelligence official told 
lawmakers Wednesday that Iran's government "appears to be intact but largely 
degraded" yet repeatedly dodged questions about whether President Donald Trump 
had been warned about the fallout from the weeks-old war, including Iran's 
attacks on Gulf nations and its effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

   Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, also stated in 
prepared remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee that U.S. attacks on Iran 
last year had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program and that there had been no 
effort since then to rebuild that capability.

   The statement was notable given Trump's repeated assertions that a war with 
Iran was necessary to head off what he said was an imminent threat from the 
Islamic Republic. Gabbard pointedly said that conclusion was the president's 
alone to draw as she declined to directly answer whether the intelligence 
community had likewise assessed that Iran's nuclear system presented an 
imminent risk to the United States.

   "It is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is 
and is not an imminent threat," she said at one point.

   Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia shot back: "It is precisely your 
responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States."

   The testimony came at the first of two congressional hearings held each year 
to offer the public a glimpse into the largely secret operations of the 
government's intelligence agencies and the threats they confront.

   The hearings this week take place at a time of scrutiny over the war with 
Iran and heightened concerns about terrorism at home after recent attacks at a 
Michigan synagogue and a Virginia university. Wednesday's hearing also came a 
day after the resignation of Joe Kent as director of the National 
Counterterrorism Center. Kent said he could not "in good conscience" back the 
war and did not agree that Iran posed an imminent threat.

   But the hours-long hearing offered few revelations from Gabbard, who 
repeatedly declined to discuss conversations with Trump, or other senior 
intelligence officials who testified.

   "I am very disappointed," said an exasperated Sen. Mark Warner, the top 
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "It's the only one time of year 
the public gets to hear from you guys in this kind of setting."

   Gabbard deflected questions about intelligence given to Trump

   A frequent line of questioning for Democrats: What intelligence, if any, had 
been given to Trump about the war's potential consequences? Trump, for 
instance, has said he was surprised that Iran responded to strikes from the 
United States by attacking Arab nations and has been contending with the 
economic impact of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a body of 
water connecting the Persian Gulf to the world's oceans and a vital passageway 
for oil and gas.

   White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that Trump 
was "fully briefed" on the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz and 
that the Pentagon has been planning for the possibility of Iran closing it "for 
DECADES."

   But Trump's plan to secure the waterway is unclear, especially after he said 
this week that NATO and most other allies had rejected his calls to help secure 
it. Iran has said the strait is open except to the U.S. and its allies.

   Democrats got few direct answers when they pressed administration officials 
on what Trump understood about that possibility, with Gabbard saying she would 
not divulge her conversations with him and CIA Director John Ratcliffe 
observing that he had been in countless briefings with the president.

   "We're trying to figure out if the president knew what the downside was of 
the Strait of Hormuz being closed," said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat. 
"Did he know this was going to happen or did he just disregard it?"

   Gabbard appeared to try to thread a needle between emphasizing the 
intelligence community's views of Iran's risks -- she said, for instance, that 
internal tensions would continue to increase even if the regime's leadership 
remained intact -- and not completely echoing the president's arguments of an 
imminent threat.

   At one point, Warner noted that Gabbard, in her prepared written statement 
submitted to the committee, said Iran's nuclear enrichment program had been 
obliterated in strikes last year, but her opening remarks on Wednesday did not 
use that language.

   He asked whether she had omitted that reference to conform to Trump's claims 
of an imminent threat. Gabbard insisted that she had skipped some of her 
written statement in the interest of time.

   Trump has sought to distance himself from Kent. Ratcliffe tried to do the 
same Wednesday when he was asked whether intelligence supported Kent's 
assessment that Iran was not an imminent threat. "The intelligence reflects the 
contrary," Ratcliffe said.

   Questions about other attacks and Gabbard's presence at an FBI search

   Gabbard and Ratcliffe fielded the majority of questions, but other witnesses 
included the heads of the National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence 
Agency, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel, who was pressed about the terrorism 
threat amid a spate of attacks this month. Those include a man with a past 
terrorism conviction who opened fire inside an Old Dominion University 
classroom in Virginia and a Lebanese-born man in Michigan who drove his car 
into a synagogue.

   One subject that did not receive attention: a deadly missile strike on an 
elementary school in Iran, which people familiar with the matter have said the 
U.S. likely carried out as a result of outdated intelligence.

   Apart from Iran, Gabbard was pressed on her presence at an FBI search in 
January of the main election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized 
voter data related to the 2020 presidential election. Her appearance at a 
domestic law enforcement operation raised eyebrows given that Gabbard's office 
is meant to focus squarely on foreign threats.

   Warner described her appearance there as part of an "organized effort to 
misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and 
potentially provide a pretext for the president's unconstitutional efforts to 
seize control of the upcoming elections."

   Gabbard responded that she was present for the search at the request of the 
president but did not participate, though she later said she helped to oversee 
it.

   The House Intelligence Committee will hold its own threats hearing on 
Thursday.