For the first time since the U.S. launched a war on Iran, this week top intelligence officials spoke publicly about the conflict. But their testimony before Congress contradicted President Donald Trump’s statements about the potential consequences and goals of the operation, challenging the White House’s effort to shape perceptions about the war.
In hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, intelligence chiefs told lawmakers that the White House was briefed about how Iran would likely retaliate against its neighbors if it came under attack, that Tehran could drive up oil prices and disrupt global supply chains, that regime change was not a goal of the war and that Israel appeared to have different objectives than Washington in the campaign.
Their answers diverged from Trump’s public comments and failed to sync with some of the White House’s talking points about the widening conflict in the Middle East.
As the war approaches its fourth week, Iran’s military is reeling from heavy bombing raids but Tehran has kept up a daily barrage of missile and drone attacks on its Arab neighbors, throttling commercial shipping in the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway, damaging energy facilities across the Persian Gulf and causing a spike in oil prices that threatens to derail the global economy. Israel, meanwhile, has opened up a second front in Lebanon with waves of airstrikes and a ground incursion.
For a president adept at driving the national narrative with blunt language and digestible sound bites, the assessments from his own intelligence leaders are further complicating his effort to explain his rationale for war to the American people, amid rising gas prices and growing Republican concerns over the upcoming midterm elections.
On Monday, Trump said “no expert” anticipated Iran would launch missile and drone attacks on its neighbors: “They [Iran] weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East … Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”
But Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe told members of Congress that the president was informed about Iran’s potential reaction to a U.S. attack, including likely retaliatory strikes on Arab neighbors, and that Tehran could hold commercial shipping at risk in the Strait of Hormuz. The intelligence assessments prompted the Pentagon to take steps to safeguard troops at bases based in the region before the war was launched, Ratcliffe said.
Gabbard added that though Iran’s “capabilities have been largely degraded,” the regime could “still have means to threaten passage through the Strait of Hormuz.”
As for Trump’s prediction three weeks ago that the Iranian regime would crumble once the air strikes were finished, Gabbard told lawmakers that the regime was still “intact” but damaged. And Ratcliffe said toppling the regime was not an objective of the operation, dubbed “Epic Fury,” for the U.S., though that might be a goal for the Israeli government.
“So to be clear, the president’s objectives with respect to Operation Epic Fury did not include regime change. That may be different from what Israel’s objectives were,” Ratcliffe told the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
The testimony also exposed differences in how Gabbard described the intelligence outlook in the run-up to the war compared to her CIA counterpart, Ratcliffe. When pressed by Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Gabbard declined to offer her view as to whether intelligence showed that Iran presented an urgent danger and was poised to attack the United States.
Instead, she adopted neutral language, saying her role was merely to ensure the president had all the relevant intelligence at hand, and that only the commander in chief could decide if the country faced an “imminent threat.”
Ratcliffe, however, struck a different tone, telling senators on Wednesday that Iran has been a menace for years.
“I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time,” Ratcliffe said.
A day later, at the House hearing, Democrats pressed for answers as to what intelligence backed up the assertion of an imminent threat.
Ratcliffe said that Iran and Israel were likely headed to war and Tehran would have attacked the United States even if Washington had no part in the conflict.
Intelligence “does reflect that in the likely event of a conflict between Iran and Israel, that the U.S. would be immediately attacked, regardless of whether the United States stayed out of that conflict,” Ratcliffe said.
His answer echoed remarks by Secretary of State Marco Rubio shortly after the start of the war. Rubio had said that the United States had to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran because Israel was likely to strike Iran and the regime would then retaliate against U.S. forces in the region.
Rubio later walked back his remarks and the administration has not repeated that explanation.
The intelligence officials also fielded questions about whether the administration and Israel’s government shared the same agenda in the military campaign, and Gabbard suggested each side had different objectives.
Although the White House and Israeli officials have said there is no daylight between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters on Thursday that he did not approve of Israel’s decision to bomb a major natural gas facility in Iran and that he told Israel not to repeat it.
Gabbard said that, based on public statements from each government, the objectives of the U.S. and Israel differed, with Israel focused on targeting Iranian leaders and the regime while the U.S. concentrated on strikes against Iran’s missile network and other military targets.
Gabbard and other intelligence officials stopped short of backing President Trump’s statements before the war that Iran would “soon” have intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. Neither Gabbard nor Ratcliffe answered directly when asked if Iran could have intercontinental ballistic missiles within six months.
Ratcliffe said that Iran’s arsenal could hit targets in the Middle East and Europe, which U.S. spy agencies have previously stated, and that its missile arsenal represented a growing threat.
Gabbard, repeating the conclusions of a previous assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that Iran could use its space launch program to start building a viable ICBM “before 2025, should Tehran attempt to pursue that capability.”
