00:00Iran was not rebuilding nuclear enrichment capacities destroyed last year by the United States and Israel.
00:07That was the finding from U.S. intelligence, contradicting a key justification by President Donald Trump for his ongoing war.
00:13Well, the scathing revelation came out during a Senate committee's questioning of the intelligence director today.
00:20Artar C. Gabard had written that statement in a statement that she was going to read ahead of the session.
00:27She decided to admit it at the beginning of her questioning.
00:31Well, let's cross live to Washington and speak to Fraser Jackson, who's going to tell us more on this.
00:35Fraser, good to see you. So we have a top Trump official who's close to Gabard resigned.
00:40And now they're reporting that he met with Vice President J.D. Vance before he stepped down.
00:45What do we know about that story?
00:49Yeah, recent reporting from The Washington Post and The Daily Beast saying that Vance met with Joe Kent the day
00:55before he resigned
00:56and encouraged him to speak to the president before he made any final decision to step down.
01:02Now, Joe Kent, of course, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center,
01:06who works very closely with Tulsi Gabbard in her role as the director of national intelligence.
01:12It was unclear, however, whether Kent had indeed taken Vance up on his advice and done so and spoken with
01:18the president.
01:18But on Wednesday in Michigan, J.D. Vance was at a campaign style event when he was speaking about Kent,
01:26saying it's fine to disagree, but once the president makes a decision,
01:30it's up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible.
01:35That's how I do my job.
01:37And I think that's how everybody in the administration should do their job, too.
01:40That, then, a thinly veiled way of showing that there's no rift between him and the president
01:47and that he's on board with Donald Trump's war in Iran.
01:50This, after much reporting has come to light in the last couple of days,
01:53that Vance was in opposition to this war in Iran.
01:57J.D. Vance himself has only been seen in public with Trump once since the war broke out three weeks
02:02ago,
02:02and that was just yesterday when the Irish Taoiseach was in town.
02:06J.D. has been pushing back against reporters and accusing them of trying to drive a wedge between him and
02:12the president.
02:13Vance, who is also a serial poster on Twitter, has said little about the war on social media,
02:17and for some, his silence has spoken volumes, really.
02:20He's tried to get out in public more since stories of a rift between him and the president have emerged,
02:26and he's backing the president despite his own history of anti-interventionist views as well.
02:32Well, Vance is said to be eyeing a run for the presidency in 2028,
02:36so his critics argue that it's possible that J.D. Vance is trying to keep his distance on this issue
02:41so that he can be on the right side of it if public sentiment on the war continues to go
02:46south for the Republicans.
02:48Well, Fraser, let's focus on that other top story that's coming out of Washington today.
02:51The director of the National Intelligence Office, Tulsi Gabbard, was testifying on the Hill.
02:57Tell us what came out of that.
03:01Yeah, Gavin has spent the last couple of days speaking before House and Senate committees,
03:05and today, on Wednesday, she dodged multiple times when asked whether there was intelligence
03:11that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.
03:14She was also accused of omitting intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities while briefing senators.
03:20That stems from the fact that in her written testimony,
03:22the director of national intelligence claimed that Tehran hadn't tried to rebuild its nuclear program
03:28since it was targeted by Donald Trump last June.
03:31But she didn't say that in her oral statement,
03:33which led to allegations from Democratic senators that she was trying to not contradict President Trump's position,
03:40which has been given as his reasoning for starting this war in the first place.
03:44Gabbard also said Iran's regime was intact but largely degraded,
03:48but dodged when asked about nuclear ambitions for the country,
03:52insisting that intelligence agencies were not capable of deciding whether Iran posed an imminent threat or not.
03:59She said the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.
04:04But that is rather odd, seeing as the president would normally make that kind of assertion
04:09on intelligence that he'd been briefed on,
04:11which had been gathered and presented to him by the intelligence agencies,
04:15which are the very things that Tulsi oversees.
04:17So, mixed messaging on the Hill coming from Tulsi Gabbard,
04:20but of course she has come under fire as well because of one of her deputies resigning,
04:24like I said, just yesterday, Joe Kent.
04:27Fraser, appreciate that update.
04:28Thank you so much for that.
04:29Fraser Jackson reporting live there from Washington.
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