DNI Tulsi Gabbard says Trump acted because he concluded the Iranian regime ‘posed an imminent threat’
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday issued a post on X in which she noted that President Donald Trump targeted Iran based on his conclusion that the regime “posed an imminent threat.”
She issued the post in the wake of Joe Kent’s resignation from his role as National Counterterrorism Center director over his opposition to the Iran war that Trump launched more than two weeks ago in conjunction with Israel.
“Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country,” Gabbard noted in her post.
WHITE HOUSE, AFTER TOP COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL QUITS, SAYS TRUMP HAD ‘STRONG’ EVIDENCE IRAN WOULD ATTACK US
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions,” she added.
“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” Gabbard wrote.
TRUMP BIDS GOODBYE TO INTEL OFFICIAL WHO RESIGNED OVER IRAN: ‘GOOD THING THAT HE’S OUT’
Kent publicly shared his resignation letter on Tuesday, asserting that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he asserted in the resignation letter.
TOP COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL RESIGNS IN PROTEST OF US WAR AGAINST IRAN
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Trump pushed back on Tuesday, saying that “it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it.”
Trump resurfaces old tweet from intel official who resigned
In the wake of Joe Kent’s resignation from the position of National Counterterrorism Center director over his opposition to the Iran war, President Donald Trump highlighted a years-old tweet in which Kent had urged the president to “wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out.”
In the January 2020 post on X, Kent tagged the president and wrote, “We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq – they are only targets now. No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”
Kent made the post in January 2020 after a U.S. strike earlier that month killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
TOP COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL RESIGNS IN PROTEST OF US WAR AGAINST IRAN
In the resignation letter that he posted to X on Tuesday, Kent asserted that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote.
IRANIAN INTELLIGENCE MINISTER KILLED IN PRECISION AIRSTRIKE, WHILE US MILITARY TARGETS MISSILE SITES
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a post on X in which she noted that the president targeted Iran due to his view that the regime represented “an imminent threat.”
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions,” Gabbard said in the post.
TRUMP BIDS GOODBYE TO INTEL OFFICIAL WHO RESIGNED OVER IRAN: ‘GOOD THING THAT HE’S OUT’
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“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” she noted.
Winning the battles, losing the war? America must define the endgame in Iran
The Pentagon’s briefings on Operation Epic Fury leave no room for debate: the U.S.-Israeli air campaign has hammered Iran. War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed more than 15,000 targets were struck. Tehran’s air defenses are in ruins. Its navy is wrecked. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine reported Iran’s ballistic missile launches against Israel and Gulf partners are down 90% since the first day of the war. By every battlefield measure, this campaign has delivered a punishing blow to the regime.
But wars are not won on target lists. They are won when military force produces a durable political outcome. More than two weeks into this campaign, that outcome remains undefined. That is the problem.
Consider the economic fallout. The Strait of Hormuz — the choke point through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply moves — is effectively closed. Tanker traffic has stopped. Oil has blown past $100 a barrel, with Brent crude touching $119 before Iran’s new supreme leader doubled down on keeping the strait shut. The International Energy Agency called it the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. That is not a rounding error. That is inflation, economic drag and political pressure on every Western government involved.
TRUMP SUDDENLY SEEMS ANXIOUS TO END THE WAR AS AMERICAN CASUALTIES MOUNT AND IRAN FINDS WAYS TO HIT BACK
The military cost is just as serious. Tomahawks, Patriots, long-range strike missiles — the precision weapons that define American warfighting — are being burned at extraordinary rates. The Pentagon told Congress this week that the first six days of Operation Epic Fury cost more than $11.3 billion, and that figure does not include pre-deployment costs or munitions replacement. Defense analysts and current officials warn the Iran campaign is drawing down the precise weapons stockpiles the United States would need to deter China in the Pacific — and that depleted inventories will take years to replace. Every Tomahawk fired over Tehran is one less available for the Taiwan Strait.
The human cost is real and irreversible. At least seven American service members were killed in combat operations before Thursday. Then all six crew members of a KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft were confirmed dead after the tanker went down over western Iraq while supporting combat strikes. Secretary Hegseth acknowledged the loss, saying “war is hell, war is chaos” and calling the airmen “American heroes, all of them.” They are also sons and daughters of American families — a fact that demands an honest accounting of what we are asking them to achieve.
Despite the pounding, the Iranian regime has not collapsed. Tehran installed Mojtaba Khamenei — the slain supreme leader’s son, described by analysts as a hardliner with deep IRGC ties — as the new ruler within days of the war starting. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps backed him immediately, and he has already vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and promised to attack every U.S. base in the region. This is not a regime on the verge of surrender.
The IRGC and Iran’s ruling clerics do not view this war purely as a geopolitical contest. They see it as a religious fight — a defense of the Islamic Republic against what they describe as an American-Zionist assault. Regimes that fight in God’s name are not easily coerced by bomb tonnage. That is not an excuse for weakness. It is a reality that must shape strategy.
EX-NAVY SEAL WARNS WITHDRAWING FROM IRAN NOW WOULD HAND ‘VICTORY’ TO REGIME
History drives the point home. Conventional airpower has never toppled a determined government by itself. Not in World War II. Not in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan. Air campaigns degrade capability and shape battlefields. They do not deliver political collapse — not without a ground force or an internal revolt. Neither is coming.
That raises the central strategic question: what exactly is the United States trying to achieve? President Donald Trump set clear objectives — deny Iran nuclear weapons and destroy its ability to threaten its neighbors with missiles and drones. After almost three weeks of strikes, those goals are within reach. But Trump has also suggested he wants to approve Iran’s next leader and questioned whether the Islamic Republic itself should survive. That is not counterproliferation. That is regime change — and regime change requires far more than an air campaign.
The question now is not whether America can keep striking Iran. Of course it can. The question is whether more strikes move the country toward a defined end state — or simply run up the cost of a war with no finish line.
Three steps point the way out.
First, complete the remaining military objectives: suppress residual missile launch capability, clear Iranian mines threatening the Strait of Hormuz, and finish the nuclear infrastructure work. Get the job done, then stop.
Second, define publicly what “done” looks like. The administration has been deliberately vague on the campaign’s end point. That ambiguity may serve short-term messaging, but it rattles markets, unnerves allies and leaves the American public in the dark about what this war is for.
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Third, shift from large-scale strikes to sustained pressure: maritime security operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, aggressive sanctions enforcement, interception of Iranian weapons transfers and a credible deterrent posture against renewed aggression. Keep the boot on Tehran’s throat without an open-ended air campaign.
In plain terms: finish the military mission, then stop widening the war.
The United States and Israel have won the opening rounds of this fight. The danger now is the pattern that played out in Iraq and Afghanistan — early military success followed by years of costly, inconclusive war that erodes the original victory. America has the firepower to keep striking Iran indefinitely. What it needs is the strategic discipline to stop when the mission is accomplished.
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The men and women executing this campaign deserve more than tactical wins. They deserve a strategy as disciplined as their service.
And so does the country.
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US bunker-buster bombs hammer Iranian anti-ship missile sites near Strait of Hormuz
U.S. forces hammered Iran’s anti-ship missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz with 5,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Tuesday, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said.
The strikes near the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil choke point, come as Iran’s stranglehold over the vital waterway has grown concerns over the regime’s threats to oil tankers.
“Hours ago, U.S. forces successfully employed multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile sites along Iran’s coastline near the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM posted Tuesday evening on X.
Deep GBU- 72 penetrator weapons, often referred to as bunker busters, are designed to cut through hardened or underground targets before detonating. The munition was first tested by the Air Force in 2021.
TRUMP SAYS MOST NATO ALLIES ‘DON’T WANT TO GET INVOLVED’ IN IRAN OPERATION, BUT US ‘NEVER’ NEEDED THEIR HELP
“The Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles in these sites posed a risk to international shipping in the strait,” the command said.
Most shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway for global oil and gas transport that supplies roughly one-fifth of the world’s crude oil, has been halted since early March, after the war started. About 20 vessels have been attacked in the area.
Oil prices have jumped more than 40% to above $100 per barrel since the Iran war began, and Iran has threatened it won’t allow “even a single liter of oil” destined for the U.S., Israel and their allies to pass through.
TRUMP WARNS NATO OF ‘VERY BAD’ FUTURE IF ALLIES DON’T HELP SECURE STRAIT OF HORMUZ
At least 89 ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz between March 1 and 15 — including 16 oil tankers, The Associated Press reported, citing Lloyd’s List Intelligence. The number of vessel passages per day was down from roughly 100 to 135 before the war, it said, with more than one-fifth of the 89 vessels believed to be Iran-affiliated and others being Chinese- and Greece-affiliated ships.
As crude prices spiked above $100 a barrel, President Donald Trump pressured allies and trade partners to send warships and reopen the strait, hoping to bring oil prices lower. No allies, however, have yet to commit.
“I think NATO’s making a very foolish mistake,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday when a reporter asked about getting America’s allies to assist the U.S. in escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. “And I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us.”
Trump added: “So this was a great test because we don’t need them, but they should have been there.”
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The U.S. on Friday bombed military sites on Kharg Island off the Iranian coast, which is key for Iran’s oil network and exports, but Trump said he had left its oil infrastructure alone for now.
Fiery aftermath of Iran missile strike near Tel Aviv caught on video after 2 killed
Video footage captured the fiery aftermath of a ballistic missile strike that hit Ramat Gan, a neighborhood east of Tel Aviv, overnight Tuesday, killing at least two people, according to Israeli officials.
The footage shows a car engulfed in flames, with wreckage scattered across the street as emergency responders assess the scene and ambulance sirens sound in the background.
The missile was launched by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which said it targeted central Israel to avenge the killing of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and one of the country’s most powerful figures.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it launched Khorramshahr-4 and Qadr multiple-warhead missiles, which it claims have an increased chance of evading missile defense systems and can overwhelm radar tracking.
ISRAEL HITS BACK AFTER COORDINATED IRAN-HEZBOLLAH MISSILE, DRONE STRIKES, URGES BEIRUT TO REIN IN TERRORISTS
Israel said the two victims killed in the overnight strike were a couple in their 70s.
The attack is part of a rapidly escalating tit-for-tat conflict that began Feb. 28 following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, which have since killed multiple senior Iranian officials. Those include Larijani and Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Basij militia, who was killed Tuesday.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also said Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib was killed in an overnight strike, though Iran has not confirmed his death.
Iran has responded with a widening campaign of missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, U.S.-linked positions and energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf, including strikes reported in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.
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The broader conflict has raised fears of a regional war and potential disruptions to global energy supplies, as Iran has also threatened shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a critical transit route for the world’s oil.