Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard confirmed Thursday that she harbors concerns about statements made by former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, who alleged Israeli influence pushed the United States into conflict with Iran.
During a House Intelligence Committee hearing, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York read aloud from Kent’s letter, including a passage in which Kent claimed U.S. involvement in the conflict with Iran stemmed from Israeli influence.
Stefanik directly asked Gabbard whether she agreed or disagreed with the assertions in Kent’s letter. Gabbard declined to take a definitive stance on the substance of Kent’s letter.
However, when Stefanik followed up by asking specifically whether Kent’s attribution of blame to Israel concerned her, Gabbard answered directly.
“Yes,” Gabbard said.
Gabbard addressed the broader contents of Kent’s letter during the hearing.
“He said a lot of things in that letter. Ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him,” Gabbard stated.
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Kent had posted his resignation letter to X on Tuesday. The letter included his assertion that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the United States.
Within hours of Kent’s resignation letter appearing on X, Gabbard issued her own statement on the platform.
In the statement, Gabbard wrote that President Donald Trump was “responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”
Gabbard described her office’s role as being “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,” but stopped short of personally assessing whether Iran posed an imminent threat.
“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 in the statement.
Gabbard’s statement on X did not address Kent’s comments regarding Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had stated on March 2 that the Trump administration knew in advance that Israel would attack Iran and that such an attack would provoke the Islamic Republic to retaliate against the United States.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, during the same Thursday hearing, suggested that Iran represented an imminent threat to the United States due to a likely impending confrontation between Israel and Iran, before walking back that characterization shortly after.
The preceding Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia pressed Gabbard at a separate hearing on whether the Intelligence Community had formally assessed Iran as an imminent threat to the United States.
Gabbard declined to answer, maintaining that Trump alone held the authority to make that determination.
Ossoff pushed back, telling Gabbard: “It is precisely your responsibility to determine what constitutes a threat to the United States.”
“This is the worldwide threats hearing where, as you noted in your opening testimony, quote, you represent the IC’s assessment of threats. You are here to represent the IC’s assessment of threats. That’s a quote from your own opening statement.”
Notably, prior to her tenure as DNI, Gabbard had publicly voiced opposition to the United States entering into a war with Iran.
