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President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he doesn’t care that his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has said that according to the assessment of U.S. intelligence sources, Iran has not been pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon for over two decades — an assessment that undercuts the U.S. and Israel’s stated reason for the current attack on Iran.
In March, Gabbard testified that U.S. spy agencies “continu[e] to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.” She added that “Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
However, in an eerie echo of the U.S. propaganda around the Iraq War, on Tuesday, Trump outright dismissed his own government’s assessments of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The statement is seemingly made in service of his quest to continue fueling Israel’s aggression and ramp up the campaign to pressure Iran to capitulate in talks for a nuclear deal, like the deal Trump himself withdrew from during his first term.
“I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one,” Trump said.
This is, at best, a complete mischaracterization of what intelligence assessments have said and is designed to stoke further violence.
Officials have found that not only is Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it is also up to three years away from creating a functional one, per CNN. However, that has not stopped U.S. and Israeli officials, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from warning that Iran is just months away from a nuclear weapon — which they have done for decades now to push for a war with Iran.
In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the U.S. was also unconvinced when Israeli officials, as a justification for the war, recently provided the U.S. with its own supposed intelligence that Iran is conducting research related to building a nuclear bomb.
Trump’s dismissal of Gabbard’s statements undercuts the idea that the core purpose of Israel’s current aggression against Iran is to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, as Netanyahu has dubiously claimed. Notably, Israel is the only country in the Middle East to actually possess nuclear weapons.
In posts on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump further dispensed with the pretense of negotiations with Iran.
“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he posted, shortly after sending another post where he outright threatened to assassinate Khomeini if Iran doesn’t capitulate to the U.S.’s demands.
“We don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin,” he said.
Analysts like Iranian writer Trita Parsi have said that the Trump administration’s demands in nuclear deal negotiations have always been about laying the groundwork for war. Last month, Parsi pointed out that the U.S.’s demand that Iran completely stop enriching uranium is “unrealistic” and a “fantasy” that, ironically, only allows Iran to take more steps toward obtaining a nuclear weapon in the absence of a deal.
“Over the past two decades, the persistent demand for zero enrichment — an unachievable goal — has only resulted in a larger and more advanced Iranian nuclear program by postponing realistic, enforceable limits on enrichment,” Parsi wrote.
Trump and Netanyahu’s fear mongering over Iran’s nuclear capabilities is heavily reminiscent of the Bush administration’s now infamous lie about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction as a pretense for the U.S.’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.
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