WASHINGTON: US intelligence concluded on Wednesday that Iran was not rebuilding nuclear enrichment capacities destroyed last year by the United States and Israel, contradicting a key justification by President Donald Trump for his ongoing war.
While Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned of the risk of “uncontrollable consequences” of attacks on energy infrastructure, after facilities in the giant Iranian South Pars gas field were targeted in the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic. He also called intelligence minister Esmail Khatib’s death a “cowardly assassination”.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Trump ally who is director of national intelligence, offered mixed signals on the backdrop and outcomes of three weeks of war as she and other officials appeared before Congress She also assessed that Iran’s leadership remained intact.
“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated,” Gabbard said in prepared testimony to the Senate intelligence committee, referring to the June 2025 US attack. “There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” Gabbard wrote.
She did not repeat the conclusion before cameras. Pressed by a Democratic senator, Gabbard said that she did not have enough time to read the full testimony at the hearing but did not refute the assessment.
Trump has repeatedly said he ordered the attack on Iran alongside Israel on February 28 because of an “imminent threat.”
Trump said after the June 2025 bombing that the United States had completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear sites, but since his latest war he has maintained that Tehran was nonetheless weeks away from a nuclear bomb and that he had to act.
The UN nuclear watchdog and most observers have not supported the finding of an imminent nuclear bomb by Iran, which was negotiating with Trump’s envoys on a deal in the days before the attack.
John Ratcliffe, director the CIA, told senators when asked about the negotiations: “It was very clear that Iran, while they were talking, they had no intentions of following through.”
Gabbard herself had been an outspoken opponent of war with Iran as a Democratic congresswoman.
One of her senior aides, Joseph Kent, resigned in protest Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying that Iran posed no “imminent threat” and that Trump was misled by Israel and media outlets.
Democrats attacked Gabbard over the war, saying she had not proven that Iran posed any threat beyond what it has since the 1979 Islamic revolution. “President Trump said, we are not the policemen of the world. He ran on that,” Democratic Senator Michael Bennet said. “Now he’s turned us into the world’s policeman, into its jury, into its judge, into its executioner,” he said.
In her remarks to senators, Gabbard said Iran had been suffering heavy blows in the weeks of attacks—which included the killing of the longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but that the Islamic republic was still functioning.
The US intelligence community “assesses the regime in Iran to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” Gabbard said.
“If a hostile regime survives, it will likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces,” Gabbard said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
In other findings, Gabbard predicted that Russia would keep pressing its four-year invasion of Ukraine, a war that Trump had vowed to end upon taking office, largely by pressing Kyiv to compromise.
US intelligence “assesses that Russia has maintained the upper hand in the war against Ukraine,” Gabbard said. She said that China was “rapidly” modernizing its military with a goal of being able to seize Taiwan.
Iran suffered a fresh blow on Wednesday with the killing of its intelligence minister Esmail Khatib. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorised the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the intelligence and operational circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said. “We will continue to thwart them and to hunt them all down.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian called Khatib’s death a “cowardly assassination”. News of Khatib’s death came the day after Iranian security chief Ali Larijani was confirmed killed in an Israeli strike. After crowds gathered in central Tehran for Larijani’s funeral, Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared in a written message that his killers would pay. “Without a doubt, the assassination of such a figure attests to his importance and to the hatred that the enemies of Islam harbour toward him,” Mojtaba Khamenei said, in a message published on his official Telegram channel on the day of Larijani’s funeral in Tehran.
”Every drop of spilled blood comes at a price, and the criminal murderers of these martyrs will soon have to pay it,” added Mojtaba Khamenei.
The new supreme leader’s whereabouts remain a mystery and he has not be seen since the war began, despite taunts from US President Donald Trump that he might not even be alive. Khatib’s funeral was held alongside those of Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force who was also killed in a strike in Iran this week, and more than 80 Iranian sailors who were killed when US forces torpedoed their frigate off Sri Lanka earlier this month.
Trucks carrying coffins draped in Iranian flags moved through the procession, as mourners walked alongside carrying portraits of the slain supreme leader and beating their chests.
Iran’s president warned on Wednesday of the risk of “uncontrollable consequences” of attacks on energy infrastructure, after facilities in the giant Iranian South Pars gas field were targeted in the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic. “This will complicate the situation and could have uncontrollable consequences, the scope of which could engulf the entire world,” Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X, adding that such attacks “will yield nothing” for Iran’s foes the US and Israel.
Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf added in a separate post on X that after the attacks on energy facilities “an eye-for-an-eye sum is in effect, and a new level of confrontation has begun”.
Qatar said on Wednesday that Iranian attacks on its main gas facility situated on its north coast were a “direct threat to its national security”. “Qatar expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the brutal Iranian attack targeting Ras Laffan Industrial City... Qatar considers this assault a dangerous escalation, a flagrant violation of its sovereignty, and a direct threat to its national security,” the Gulf state’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Qatar’s state-run energy company said that fires set by Iranian strikes on its main gas facility had caused “extensive damage”, after Tehran said it would retaliate in kind for an attack on its own energy infrastructure.
A second round of loud explosions rang out over Riyadh on Wednesday, AFP journalists reported, after authorities previously said they intercepted four ballistic missiles headed towards the Saudi capital.
Saudi Arabia also said it destroyed a drone headed towards a gas plant on Wednesday. “A drone attempting to approach a gas factory in the Eastern Province was intercepted and destroyed; the interception and destruction operation resulted in no damage,” the Saudi defence ministry said.
The UAE condemned the targeting on Wednesday of Iranian facilities in a gas field shared with Qatar, calling the attack attributed by Iran to the US and Israel a “dangerous escalation” in a rare rebuke.
“The United Arab Emirates affirmed that targeting energy facilities linked to the South Pars gas field in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is an extension of the North Field in the sisterly State of Qatar, constitutes a dangerous escalation,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “Targeting energy infrastructure poses a direct threat to global energy security... It also entails serious environmental repercussions and exposes civilians, maritime security, and vital civilian and industrial facilities to direct risks,” it added.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on Wednesday that safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz is a priority for Europe and the EU supports a diplomatic solution to the war, an EU official told Reuters.
In a phone call on Wednesday morning, Kallas “called on Iran to cease all attacks on critical infrastructure in the region,” the official said, adding that the bloc’s top diplomat “stressed that the EU supports de-escalation and a diplomatic solution to the war”.
“The call took place before the execution of a European citizen held by the regime, which the EU condemns in strongest terms,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Gulf states and Western nations strongly criticised Iran at an emergency meeting Wednesday of the UN’s maritime body, convened amid growing fears for thousands of stranded ships and seafarers.
Numerous nations used opening statements at the International Maritime Organization gathering to lambast Tehran’s response to US-Israeli strikes, which has seen Iran target Gulf countries and commercial shipping.
That has crippled maritime trade in or near the Strait of Hormuz, leaving around 20,000 seafarers stuck on approximately 3,200 vessels west of the crucial chokepoint, according to the IMO.
“Qatar resolutely condemns the attacks and threats from ... Iran perpetrated against merchant vessels and seafarers as well as shipping infrastructure in the region,” the Gulf state’s IMO delegate told the meeting.
The United Arab Emirates called Iran’s actions “unprovoked, unjustifiable, indiscriminate and wholly unlawful”. Saudi Arabia branded them “utterly unacceptable and unjustifiable under any circumstances”.
The United States urged countries to “push back against the cynical actions of a regime that seeks to sow economic and geopolitical instability as a strategy for political self-preservation”.
In response, Iran blamed “the recent unlawful use of force and military aggression by the United States and the Israeli regime”.
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah condemned Wednesday Israel’s killing of Iranian national seucrity chief Ali Larijani, calling it “cowardly”.
The Iranian women’s football team, whose plight has become embroiled in the Middle East war, returned back to Iran on Wednesday where they were promised a welcome ceremony in Tehran.
Seven members of the delegation had sought asylum in Australia last week after their decision not to sing the national anthem before their opening game at the Women’s Asian Cup. With their demands for protection an embarrassment for Iran’s leaders, but lauded by US President Donald Trump, five later changed their minds, including captain Zahra Ghanbari. Two members have remained in Australia, but the rest of the team completed a long journey back on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump’s administration scrambled Wednesday to rein in surging energy costs from war in the Middle East, temporarily waiving a century-old shipping law and easing Venezuela sanctions.
For now, Trump’s announcement of a 60-day Jones Act waiver would lift a ban on foreign-flagged vessels transporting cargo between US ports over this period.
Oil prices surged Wednesday following a strike on one of Iran’s gas facilities that raised the spectre of a further escalation of attacks on energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.
Brent oil rose over six percent at one point to nearly $110 a barrel after Iran vowed to hit energy facilities throughout the Gulf in retaliation to what it said was an Israeli attack on a facility serving a massive gas field it shares with Qatar.
Iran’s military said it would target energy infrastructure across the Gulf following a US-Israeli attack on its facilities at a major gas field, state television reported on Wednesday.
Iraq’s gas imports from Iran were completely halted on Wednesday, authorities said, the latest blow to the country’s battered economy reeling from the impact of the Middle East war.
Israel repeatedly struck central Beirut on Wednesday, with Lebanese authorities reporting a death toll of at least 12 including a director for Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV channel, and began striking river crossings in south Lebanon.
The Israeli military told AFP on Wednesday that “debris” had hit Ben Gurion international airport following Iranian missile fire, without specifying when the incident had occurred.
Israeli media reported that private planes parked at the airport near Tel Aviv had sustained damage. The army lifted the censorship order regarding the incident on Wednesday but did not authorise the disclosure of the date.
Three private planes parked at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv suffered “severe” damage after being hit by debris from an Iranian missile, the Israel Airports Authority said on Wednesday.
Sweden’s intelligence service said Wednesday that the war in the Middle East has led to increased threats to US and Israeli interests, but stressed that Russia remained the main threat to the country.
The UN nuclear watchdog said Wednesday that Iranian authorities had reported a projectile impact at the country’s only operational nuclear power plant but that it caused no damage. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening”, the Vienna-based agency posted on social media.
”No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported.”
Russia on Wednesday condemned the killing of Iranian security chief Ali Larijani, after ally Tehran vowed retaliation for his death in an Israeli airstrike.
A barrage of missiles from Iran killed two people near Tel Aviv, Israeli medics said, bringing the death toll from missiles fired on the country to 14.
President Donald Trump angrily suggested Wednesday that he could leave US allies to secure the Hormuz strait on their own since they have refused to fight alongside US forces against Iran in the crucial shipping lane.
Iran’s ambassador offered safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz for South African cargoes Wednesday and urged all BRICS nations to demand an end to US-Israel “aggression”.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the military has been authorised to target any senior Iranian official without requiring further approval.
Iranian authorities said on Wednesday they had arrested more than 100 alleged “monarchist cells” plotting against the Islamic Republic, along with suspected spies and individuals accused of cooperating with an outlawed television channel.
Turkey’s defence ministry said Wednesday NATO was deploying a new Patriot missile battery at Incirlik air base, just days after a third ballistic missile from Iran was shot down.
Three Balkan countries and two Baltic states, along with Czech Republic, are the only six of 32 NATO members that have issued public statements of support for the US-Israel strikes on Iran, as President Donald Trump faces broad resistance from the coalition to his request for aid in the military operation, Forbes reported. These countries are Czech Republic, Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Latvia.
Qatar has declared the security and military attache in Iran’s embassy as “persona non grata”, asking them to leave the country within a period of maximum 24 hours, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. Doha attributed the decision to Iran’s repeated attacks on the country, the latest of which targeted Qatar’s Rass Laffan industrial city.—Agencies/News Desk
