WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, repeatedly dodged questions on Wednesday about whether Iran posed an “imminent” threat to the United States before the U.S. launched missile strikes against Tehran last month.

“The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president,” Gabbard told lawmakers at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats.

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she added.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) pushed back on Gabbard’s statement, calling it “false.”

“It is precisely your responsibility to say what constitutes a threat to the United States. This is the worldwide threats hearing, where you present to Congress national intelligence — timely, objective and independent of political considerations,” he fired back.

“You’re evading a question because to provide a candid response to the committee would contradict a statement from the White House,” he added.

Gabbard, who in 2020 was selling “No War With Iran” T-shirts and who, as a member of Congress, was very critical of foreign entanglements abroad, has been very careful to ascribe the decision to go to war against Iran to Trump alone.

“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,” she said in a social media post on Tuesday.

Gabbard was pushing back against claims from one of her top aides, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who resigned this week over the U.S. war in Iran. Kent said Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, contradicting the Trump administration.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said in his resignation letter to Trump.

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