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Donald Trump’s national security team briefed the Senate on Thursday about the president’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities last Saturday, but one Cabinet member was conspicuously absent.
Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe all spoke to senators in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).
But Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was missing from the briefing, which came after multiple news outlets reported on a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, first reported by CNN, that questioned whether the strikes destroyed the core components of the Iran nuclear program.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, excoriated the reports and the leaks and the characterization that the strikes may not have destroyed Iran’s nuclear programs as Trump and Hegseth have maintained.
“Without any classified information whatsoever, I think it’s safe to say that we have struck a major blow, alongside our friends in Israel, against Iran’s nuclear program,” Cotton told reporters afterward.
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Cotton’s words came after the White House furiously pushed back, especially against CNN and one of its reporters, Natasha Bertrand, over the story that Iran’s nuclear program was not obliterated.
Hegseth accused reporters on Thursday of trying to cast doubt on the strikes because of an underlying vendetta against the president. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt excoriated Bertrand, saying she should be “ashamed of herself” a day after Trump in a Truth Social post blasted her and called for her firing.
But Gabbard’s absence from the briefing left some senators casting doubt on the administration officials’ assessment.
“I think she has a very different opinion than than the others,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told The Independent. “I wonder what her conclusion is about. I assume that Director Gabbard does not agree with the assessment of the people in that room.”
In the lead-up to the strikes on Iran, Trump significantly broke with Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who endorsed him in 2024. In March, Gabbard had testified before Congress and said she “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”
“I don’t care what she said — I think they were very close to having one,” Trump said earlier this month.
“Obviously her prior disagreement was, was on the amount of time that it was going to take for Iran to get a nuclear weapon before the strikes happened,” Murphy told The Independent.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst, said she had more questions.
“I don't, I don't know what to think of that,” Slotkin told The Independent. “Obviously there was a public spat, so I'm assuming there's a cat fight going on. But I have no other special knowledge.”
Over the weekend, the United States conducted strikes on nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz and Ishfahan. In the case of Fordow, US forces dropped 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs. The strikes are said to have set back Iran’s nuclear program at least six months.
Hegseth and Caine’s briefing did not provide adequate evidence about whether the United States knows the location of enriched uranium Iran had stored in Fordow.
“I guess for me, the most important thing is to actually get a better analysis, to actually make the termination,” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona told The Independent.
“I didn't get enough information there to determine one way or the other. So, I'll have to keep looking into it.”
