A new war based on manipulated intelligence
On March 20, 2002, President George W. Bush began the bombing campaign in Iraq, justifying the attack with manipulated and bogus intelligence. Twenty-three years later, history is repeating itself.
The clear judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not authorized a nuclear weapons program. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the nation’s top intelligence official, said so publicly on March 25, 2025. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard asserted in her opening statement.
Last Tuesday, asked about Gabbard’s testimony on Iran, Trump said, “I don’t care what she said.” On Friday, as his rhetoric became more bellicose, Trump was reminded of that March assessment and asked: “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon?” Trump did not say that the intelligence community had gathered new information since March. Rather, Trump said that “my intelligence community is wrong.” He also publicly rebuked Gabbard again, adding, “She’s wrong.”
Now, to justify the bombing of several sites in Iran, top members of the Trump administration claim Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Vice President JD Vance said that the administration believed “the Iranians were rushing toward a nuclear weapons program.” That directly contradicts the March assessment by the IC that no such program had been authorized, much less commenced.
Vance dodged questions on whether the intelligence has changed since March:
KRISTEN WELKER: Why launch this strike now? Has the intelligence changed Mr. Vice President?
VANCE: A couple things about that Kristen. What Tulsi said back in March is that Iran was producing highly-enriched Uranium that was only consistent with them wanting to build a nuclear weapon.
The transcript of Gabbard’s Congressional hearing reveals Vance’s characterization of Gabbard’s remarks is false and misleading. She did say that Iran was enriching Uranium, something that has been true for many years, and that its enriched uranium stockpile was higher than that of other nations without nuclear weapons. But she was clear that they had not taken steps to build a nuclear weapon, nor had such a program been authorized.
On Sunday, in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the intelligence about whether Iran had decided to build a nuclear weapon “irrelevant.”
Margaret Brennan: Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the supreme leader had ordered weaponization?
Rubio: That’s irrelevant. I see that question being asked in the media all the time. That’s an irrelevant question. They have everything they need to build a weapon.
Brennan: No, but that is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
Brennan: Yes, it was.
Rubio: No, it’s not.
At a Pentagon press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also avoided answering whether the intelligence assessment had changed since March:
Q: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, concerning the justification for these strikes, in March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released their threat assessment concluded, “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear programs he suspended in 2003.” So, what new intelligence does the US have since then that the Iranians have changed their position on nuclear weapons, and does this new intelligence come from U.S. sources and methods, or are we getting this information from other countries?
A: Well, I would just simply say that the President’s made it very clear he’s looked at all of this, all of the intelligence, all the information, and come to the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat, and was willing to take this precision operation to neutralize that threat in order to advance American national interests, reduce the Iranian nuclear program and obviously collective self-defense of ourself and our allies.
According to several members of Congress who received recent intelligence briefings on Iran, the IC’s assessment of Iran had not changed since March.
Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice-chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, said he and other Senators were briefed on the intelligence on Monday and “got reconfirmed… that the intelligence hasn’t changed.” Similarly, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said he was briefed last week and learned Iran “was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon” and “posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States.”
The New York Times reported Thursday that “U.S. intelligence agencies continue to believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to make a nuclear bomb.” According to the report, based on information from “intelligence and other American officials,” the IC “assessment has not changed since the intelligence agencies last addressed the question of Iran’s intentions in March.” (Rather, according to the New York Times, the IC believed “Iranian leaders were likely to shift toward producing a bomb if the American military attacked the Iranian uranium enrichment site Fordo.”)
This is also consistent with the judgment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the international organization that was monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities before Israel began its bombing campaign earlier this month. On Friday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said that “[w]e do not have at this point, if you ask me, at this time, any tangible proof that there is a program, or a plan, to fabricate, to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”
The United States also ignored the IAEA’s assessments in the lead-up to the Iraq War, but the agency’s conclusion that the country did not have a nuclear weapons program proved correct.
In Iraq, Bush administration officials cast aside inconvenient intelligence assessments because they supported regime change. On Sunday morning, Vance and Rubio repeatedly insisted that regime change was not the Trump administration’s goal. “Our view has been very clear,” Vance said on Meet the Press. “[W]e don’t want a regime change.”
On Sunday afternoon, Trump endorsed regime change in Iran.
Rewriting diplomatic history
Could international concerns about Iran’s nuclear material have been solved diplomatically? It had been done before.
In 2014, the United States and other countries entered an agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In return for sanctions relief, Iran agreed to dramatically reduce its stockpile of enriched Uranium. Iran also agreed to grant the IAEA broad access to its nuclear facilities to monitor compliance. The program essentially halted Iran’s Uranium enrichment. Then, in 2018, Trump abruptly withdrew from the agreement. Trump did not claim that Iran had violated the terms of the agreement and replaced it with nothing.
In April 2025, the Trump administration resumed diplomatic negotiations with Iran to reach a new deal. In his interview Sunday, Vance claimed that “by mid-May, everyone in our intelligence community, in the President’s senior team, looked at ourselves and said, ‘The Iranians are not being serious.’”
This is completely inconsistent with what Trump was saying publicly.
On May 14, Trump said, “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace.” Trump stated that he was optimistic about reaching a successful conclusion, telling reporters that the United States and Iran were “getting close to maybe doing a deal.” In late May, according to the New York Times, “Trump again warned the Israeli leader [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] against a unilateral attack that would short-circuit the diplomacy.”
On June 12, Trump said, “We’re fairly close to an agreement [with Iran]. We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement.” The next day, Israel began their bombing campaign, which scuttled the scheduled sixth round of negotiations between the United States and Iran. Even after the Israeli bombing campaign began, Trump said he was optimistic that the United States and Iran could reach an agreement. “I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table,” Trump said on June 16. “They want to make a deal.”
A familiar tale of foreign intelligence
One of the key drivers of the Iraq War was information that the United States obtained from Italian intelligence that Iraq was seeking to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. This was the basis of Bush’s famous line justifying a strike on Iraq, “We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” The intelligence was later revealed to be based on forged documents.
While the assessment about Iran advanced by Trump, Vance, and others is inconsistent with United States intelligence, it appears to be heavily influenced by Israeli intelligence. “The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear that they were working on a secret plan to weaponize the uranium,” Netanyahu told Fox News on June 15.
According to the Wall Street Journal, however, “U.S. officials briefed by the Israelis weren’t convinced that the information pointed to a decision by Tehran to build a bomb, according to a senior intelligence official.” The headline of the article was, “Israel Built Its Case for War With Iran on New Intelligence. The U.S. Didn’t Buy It.” Similar reporting appeared in the New York Times.
Netanyahu has been arguing that Iran has a nuclear weapons program that justifies a declaration of war for many years. In a September 2012 address to the United Nations, Netanyahu famously used a cartoon bomb to dramatize his point.
In his speech, Netanyahu encouraged other countries to look beyond their intelligence agencies and focus on his description of the threat posed by Iran. “No one appreciates our intelligence agencies more than the Prime Minister of Israel. All these leading intelligence agencies are superb, including ours. They’ve foiled many attacks. They’ve saved many lives,” Netanyahu said. “But they are not foolproof.” He warned that if the United States and others in the international community ignored his warnings, Iran could produce a bomb in a few months.
Thirteen years later, Netanyahu has found an administration willing to ignore its own intelligence agencies and join a war.