Trump, Gabbard Comments on Iran Nuclear Capability – FactCheck.org

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President Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, appeared to be at odds over whether Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon, but Gabbard said the two leaders were saying “the same thing.” We’ll lay out the facts.

In her opening statement to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 25 about the Intelligence Community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, Gabbard stated, “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”

In an interview with reporters aboard Air Force One on June 17, Trump said he believed Iran was “very close” to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Asked about Gabbard’s statement on the IC assessment in March, Trump responded, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”

Nonetheless, Gabbard subsequently told a CNN reporter that she and the president are “on the same page.”

Trump “was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March,” Gabbard said. “Unfortunately too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said.”

Here’s the entirety of Gabbard’s comments related specifically to Iran on March 25 (we bolded the text highlighted above as well as parts of her testimony that Office of the Director of National Intelligence officials say have been ignored by the media):

Gabbard, March 25: Iran continues to seek expansion of its influence in the Middle East, despite the degradation to its proxies and defenses during the Gaza conflict. Iran has developed and maintains ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs, including systems capable of striking U.S. targets and allies in the region. Tehran has shown a willingness to use these weapons, including during a 2020 attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and in attacks against Israel in April and October 2024. Iran’s cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat to U.S. networks and data.

The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program. In the past year, we have seen an erosion of a decades-long taboo in Iran on discussing nuclear weapons in public, likely emboldening nuclear weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus. Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.

Iran will likely continue efforts to counter Israel and press for a U.S. military withdrawal from the region by aiding, arming, and helping to reconstitute its loose consortium of like-minded terrorist and militant actors, which it refers to as its “Axis of Resistance.” Although weakened, this collection of actors still presents a wide range of threats, including to Israel’s population, U.S. forces deployed in Iraq and Syria, and to U.S. and international military and commercial shipping and transit.

An ODNI official highlighted to us Gabbard’s comments in that statement about more open discussions in Iran about nuclear weapons and that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

“Just because Iran is not building a nuclear weapon right now, doesn’t mean they aren’t ‘very close’ as President Trump said on Air Force One,” the ODNI official said, adding that Trump’s and Gabbard’s statements are “congruent.”

“All the points DNI Gabbard made during the ATA hearing outside of the singular statement that ‘Iran is not building’ a nuclear weapon, point to the country being very close to building one,” the official said. “The difference between the two statements is apples to oranges when you take into account her full ATA statement, which many in the media are refusing to acknowledge.”

On X, Vice President JD Vance pushed back when asked if Gabbard’s assessment in March was wrong.

“First off, Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then,” Vance wrote.

Vance also argued that Gabbard’s point about enriched uranium was consistent with his comments that Iran has “enriched uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose.”

“It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium,” Vance wrote.

Estimates of Iran Nuclear Weapon Timeline

Trump’s statement that Iran is “very close” to a nuclear weapon is vague, and depends on how this is measured. Experts told us it would take Iran a week or so to produce weapons-grade uranium, if it chose to do so, but it would take several months or more to turn that uranium into a nuclear weapon.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization that provides analysis on arms control and national security issues, explained to us in a phone interview that there are “two or three ways to define how close to a nuclear weapon a country is.”

One is what’s known as the “breakout” time. “There’s broad consensus among experts that Iran’s breakout time — defined as the time needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one bomb — is currently at roughly one week or less given its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and advanced centrifuge capacity,” Shawn Rostker, research analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told us in an email, noting that there’s uncertainty now about what impact Israel’s attacks have had on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

At the breakout point, Iran wouldn’t yet have a nuclear weapon. “They would have the raw materials,” Kimball said.

U.S. officials have put the breakout time at about one to two weeks since at least July 2024, when then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave that time frame. In a June 10 unclassified statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, cited the International Atomic Energy Agency in giving a minimum one-week estimate.

“The IAEA uses 90% enrichment as the benchmark for weapons-grade uranium, and it considers 25 kg of 90% enriched uranium enough to construct a simple nuclear weapon,” Kurilla’s statement said. “The IAEA estimates current Iranian stockpiles to include over 400 kg of 60% enriched uranium – almost double of what it was just six months ago. This is mere steps from reaching the 90% threshold for weaponization. Should the Regime decide to sprint to a nuclear weapon, it is estimated that current stockpiles and the available centrifuges across several enrichment plants are sufficient to produce its first 25 kg of weapons-grade material in roughly one week and enough for up to ten nuclear weapons in three weeks.”

It would take more time before Iran would have a nuclear weapon.

Kimball said the Intelligence Community and independent experts like his group “generally estimate it would still take Iran several more months to craft a crude nuclear device. It would take longer to assemble a smaller, lighter nuclear device that would be delivered on a ballistic missile.”

Rostker, also drawing from IAEA and other non-proliferation assessments, said that converting the uranium into a “deliverable nuclear device” was “complex” and “could take several months to over a year or longer, depending on Iran’s capabilities, decisions, and whether it chooses to test.”

Kimball noted that the U.S. intelligence assessment, as of last week, has continued to be that Iran “had not made a decision to weaponize its nuclear programs.” Trump was speaking “extremely casually,” and Iran is “very close” in vague terms, he said. But “there was not an immediate threat … that Iran was racing to build nuclear devices,” Kimball said, especially one that could be delivered on missiles.

In a May 31 report released last week, IAEA said it “has no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear programme” to develop nuclear weapons in Iran, and it noted high officials in the country have said that using nuclear weapons was “incompatible with Islamic Law.” But the IAEA said it had concerns about “repeated statements by former high-level officials in Iran related to Iran having all capabilities to manufacture nuclear weapons.”

The agency said, “[T]he fact that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon State in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60% remains a matter of serious concern, which has drawn international attention given the potential proliferation implications.”

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