DNI Gabbard Must Reverse “Stupid” US Intelligence on Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Iran’s nuclear weapons program made tremendous advances over the past four years and can now enrich enough weapons-grade uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb in less than a week. Despite this fact, America’s intelligence agencies are sticking to their longtime position that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.

This line of reasoning is so ridiculous that a former CIA director once called it “stupid intelligence.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard should do away with this “stupid intelligence” immediately because the evidence for an active Iranian nuclear weapons program is overwhelming and undeniable.

Iran claims it is enriching uranium only for peaceful purposes to produce fuel for its one operational nuclear power reactor at Bushehr, two or three small research reactors, and to make radiopharmaceuticals. This claim is farcical. Iran imports fuel rods for its Bushehr nuclear power reactor because it cannot produce them domestically. Iran could also obtain radiopharmaceuticals and fuel for its research reactors at a much lower cost on the international market.

More importantly, the huge amount of near-weapons-grade uranium Iran is enriching is clearly part of a nuclear weapons program because enrichment at this level can be used for only one purpose: nuclear bomb fuel. Iran can now enrich enough uranium to fuel one nuclear weapon in less than a week and 14 in about four months, according to a February 2025 report by the Institute for Science and International Security.

This is a significant increase from late 2020, when Iran could only enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for two bombs in about 5.5 months.

In addition, Iran has spent billions of dollars to develop a covert nuclear weapons infrastructure and to conduct research on producing nuclear warheads. The Iran Nuclear Archive—secret documents on Iran’s nuclear weapons program stolen from Iran by Israel in 2018—also revealed that Iran has acquired several nuclear bomb plans.

The Iran Nuclear Archive also confirmed that although Iranian officials scaled back their nuclear weapons effort following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the program quietly continued as a classified operation with a sophisticated deception effort to conceal its existence from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors and the world.

The 2018 secret documents on Iran’s nuclear program also contained information about nuclear sites that Iran had not disclosed to the IAEA in violation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA. The Iranian government destroyed or tried to “sanitize” several of these sites over the last few years after these documents revealed their locations. The IAEA Board of Governors censured Iran in 2022 and 2024 for its refusal to cooperate with investigations of these suspect nuclear sites.

Finally, there is ample other evidence of Iranian cheating on the JCPOA. This included clandestine efforts to acquire illicit nuclear technology and equipment, violating JCPOA restrictions on advanced centrifuge development as well as producing excess heavy water.

Despite the above and other strong evidence of an active Iranian nuclear weapons program, America’s intelligence agencies maintain today that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program because Iran’s leaders have not ordered the actual construction of nuclear warheads and because they refuse to treat Iran’s uranium enrichment effort as evidence of a nuclear weapons program. The Intelligence Community said in its 2025 unclassified Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community: “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iranian Supreme Leader] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

This absurd assessment dates to 2007, when the U.S. Intelligence Community issued a controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concluded Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003 and no longer had an active weaponization effort.

To reach this conclusion, the NIE buried in a footnote a new and extremely narrow definition of a nuclear weapons program, which only included “Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work.”

But more importantly, the footnote excluded “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment” as evidence of a nuclear weapons program. This meant that if Iran openly enriched uranium short of weapons-grade, U.S. intelligence agencies would not consider this evidence of weaponization.

This new definition allowed the 2007 NIE to declare that Iran did not have an active nuclear weapons program despite its rapidly advancing—but declared—uranium enrichment effort that it initiated in secret and with the assistance of Dr. A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.

This NIE was a blatant attempt by intelligence and State Department careerists to sabotage President George W. Bush’s Iran policy. The NIE’s principal authors—former U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill, Vann Van Diepen, and Thomas Fingar—were former State Department officials who moved to top intelligence posts. An intelligence source described them to the Wall Street Journal as “hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials.

The 2007 NIE and its new definition of Iran’s nuclear weapons program sparked angry condemnations from many experts.

James Schlesinger, a former Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, and CIA Director, called the NIE “stupid intelligence” and was highly critical of its new definition of a nuclear weapons program. Schlesinger warned intelligence officials in his article against “blinding oneself to the most obvious explanation of what has occurred.”

In a separate article, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz also called the 2007 NIE “stupid intelligence” and said, “The authors of the perverse NIE report, which is influencing policy so negatively, will have much to answer for if their assessment results in a reduction of pressure on Iran.” He wrote about the NIE’s new, narrow definition of a nuclear weapons program:

“The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop technology directly related to military use…[T]he second track is to develop nuclear technology for civilian use and then to use the civilian technology for military purposes.”

British, French, German, and Israeli officials disagreed with the 2007 NIE. German intelligence issued a report in 2008 that “showed comprehensively” that “development work on nuclear weapons can be observed in Iran even after 2003,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The 2007 Iran NIE was one of the most politicized U.S. intelligence assessments ever. It was a successful effort by the deep state to sabotage a U.S. president’s foreign policy that seriously undermined the executive branch and Congress’s trust in the objectivity and professionalism of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Even worse, for 27 years, the 2007 Iran NIE has enabled Iranian officials and their supporters to easily dismiss concerns about Iran’s growing nuclear program by pointing out that the U.S. Intelligence Community had concluded there is no evidence of weaponization. Iranian leaders have tried to leverage the intelligence community’s position by issuing ludicrous warnings that they might change their minds on weaponization.

It truly is incredible that today, when Iran is known to have enriched large amounts of near-weapons-grade uranium and could fuel 17 nuclear bombs in four months, America’s intelligence agencies are sticking to their fraudulent 2007 definition of an Iranian nuclear weapons program to assess that Iran does not have such a program because they refuse to count Iran’s enrichment effort as evidence of weaponization and they have no proof that Iran is constructing nuclear warheads.

I expect Tulsi Gabbard to accomplish great things as President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, including reforming and depoliticizing America’s 18 intelligence agencies. Replacing the 2007 Iran NIE and all related intelligence assessments with a fair and honest assessment of Iran’s continuing and active pursuit of nuclear weapons could prove to be one of her greatest accomplishments.

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Fred Fleitz previously served as National Security Council chief of staff, CIA analyst, and a House Intelligence Committee staff member. He was a member of the CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center and served as a U.S. delegate to the IAEA Board of Governors.