According to US President Donald Trump’s decision to attack three Iranian nuclear systems on Saturday, government officials hardly stipulate that the unprecedented and potentially catastrophic-attacks were motivated by new intelligence information,, which indicate that Iran is about to have nuclear weapons.
A few months ago, Trump’s director of the national secret services, Tulsi Gabbard, said in her opening speech before the congress that the US secret service group “continues to assume that Iran has not building any nuclear weapons” and has not resumed its nuclear weapon program.
Although Trump has recently publicly questioned Gabard’s statement, two government officials, with knowledge of the internal consultations of the past few weeks, say that the president’s decision was not motivated by new US intelligence skills about Iran.
“Iran was not a direct threat”
“There are no secret service information,” says one of the officials who were allowed to speak about delicate affairs on the condition of anonymity. “Nothing new, as far as I know … The President protects the United States and our interests, [aber] The intelligence assessments have not really changed compared to the past. ”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, confirmed on Saturday evening that the American intelligence service would not have changed over Iran. “I was informed about the secret service information last week. Iran was not an immediate threat to the United States,” he wrote on social media. “Iran was not about to build an operational atomic bomb.”
The spokeswoman for the White House, Anna Kelly, says: “This is false and lazy ‘reporting’, which aims to undermine President Trump’s extremely successful operation to smell Iranian nuclear skills.”
Trump’s attacks on Iran represent an act of war – and could trigger a new, long -term conflict that has the potential to expand massively. Unlike the last time a US president, a war in the Middle East began-when George W. Bush America led to a catastrophic war in Iraq-he and his team spent about a year to build a propaganda lying campaign in order to convince an already military-friendly public.
Attack without warning – despite poor survey values
The second Trump government waived this prelude and pushed the USA into conflict in the quick process-at a time when opinion surveys show that the idea of a war with Iran is extremely unpopular in the American people.
In his speech to the nation on Saturday evening, Trump said: “Our goal was the destruction of the Iranian uranium enrichment capacities and the end of the nuclear threat from the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
On Saturday, Trump did not claim that he started the attacks because Iran was about to have an atomic bomb – as he had indicated at the beginning of the week. “I think they were very close to having one,” said the President on Tuesday when he questioned Gabard’s statement before the congress.
Since then, the Trump government has tried to reinterpret Gabbard’s statements before the congress, since it was added to it that Iran had “not building any atomic bomb”: “The supply of enriched uranium of Iran is at a record level-unexploited for a state without nuclear weapons.”
Gabbard wrote on X: “The dishonest media deliberately tear my statement out of context and spread fake news to sow. America has an ambiguous service information that Iran is able to produce an atomic bomb within weeks to months if he decides to complete the assembly.”
US central order: Iran can build ten bombs within three weeks
“As the President and Officials of the White House said many, many times, US intelligence information shows that Iran has everything it needs to build an atomic bomb,” says Kelly. She refers to a statement by General Michael Kurilla, the head of the US Central Command, which explained at the beginning of the month that the “current [Uran-]Iran supplies and the available centrifuges in several enrichment systems are sufficient to produce 25 kg of weapon -capable material within a week and within three weeks enough for up to ten nuclear weapons. ”
The attacks on Iran are both a significant escalation and a abrupt change to the course to Tehran. Recently Trump worked on a new nuclear agreement with Iran – a development that is ironic insofar as Trump had got out from Barack Obama’s nuclear deal during his first term.
“Nothing but gut feeling”
Within the US government, high-ranking civil servants and political decision-makers are no longer doing so than based Trump’s claims about an upcoming nuclear threat to more than one gut feeling-whether or not.
During a press conference on Sunday morning, Defense Minister Pete Hegseth was asked whether the United States had new intelligence information that suggests that Iran try to build nuclear weapons.
“I would simply say that the president made it very clear that he looked at everything – all the intelligence information, all facts – and came to the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat,” said Hegseth.
In the NBC show “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance was asked whether Trump had decided to attack Iran based on US intelligence information or on the basis of information from Israel, which has been attacking Iranian nuclear and military facilities, officials and scientists since June 13.
“Of course we share secret service information with many agencies, British, Israeli and so on, but it was our intelligence information information that motivated us to act,” said Vance before changing the topic quickly.
“What I really want to emphasize is how much Iran seems to block us,” he said. “By the way, that was not our consensus in March of this year – we saw some concessions on the part of Iran at the time. The conversations seemed productive to be productive at the time. But everyone in our secret service group and in the team of the president said: Iran is not serious. … If you believe that I did it that the Iran is in the direction of a nuclear weapon program, while he can negotiate at the same time, how to act differently than to act differently than to act differently at the same time to take against this program? “