director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard Have publicly defended the President Donald Trump’s The right to determine the threats posed by Iran. This was an indirect response to the resignation of his deputy Joe Kent.
Tulsi Gabbard defends Donald Trump’s decision on Iran war
In a social media statement released after Joe Kent’s resignation, Tulsi Gabbard addressed the main controversy without naming her former deputy. Kent’s resignation letter alleged that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” were using misinformation to deceive Trump “into believing that Iran is an imminent threat to the United States.”
Gabbard took a different approach, focusing on presidential authority rather than intelligence. He wrote that because Donald Trump “was overwhelmingly elected by the American people as our President and Commander in Chief… he is responsible for determining what is an imminent threat and what is not.”
Additionally, Gabbard emphasized her office’s role in supporting the president’s decisions. National Intelligence, he explained, “is responsible for helping to coordinate and integrate all intelligence information to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform their decisions.” He added, “After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamic regime in Iran poses an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.”
Following her statement, political observers quickly pointed out that Gabbard clearly did not agree with Trump’s assessment of the Iranian threat. Jonathan Carl, ABC News correspondent, saw That “Nowhere in this statement did he say he agreed that Iran posed an imminent threat – or that the intelligence community supported such a conclusion.”
This careful wording represents a notable change from Gabbard’s previous stance on Iran. During his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, he repeatedly warned of military action against Iran. He produced campaign ads claiming that Trump wanted to start a war with Iran and cautioning Fox News viewers that “a war with Iran would make the Iraq/Afghanistan war look like a picnic.” Overall, Gabbard’s political evolution on the Iran issue is surprising when examining her congressional record.
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu Mandatory.