On June 20, the United States launched airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, including the hardened enrichment site at Fordo. The mission marked a clear escalation: a direct strike that crossed a long-acknowledged red line. In announcing the operation to the American people, President Donald Trump said the U.S. military had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
But beneath the satellite images of the newly cratered sites lies a deeper concern — one that goes beyond the strike itself. It’s about how strategic intelligence is handled — or sidelined — and what that reveals about the breakdown of institutional safeguards inside the U.S. intelligence community.
In early March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress alongside the leaders of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. She presented the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment. Her statement was cautious but clear: Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Furthermore, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had not reversed the suspension of the program he halted in 2003.
No new intelligence was presented in the following weeks to suggest a shift. No supplemental testimony. No updated assessments. The president did not dispute the March testimony — until he did.
Tulsi Gabbard changed course
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Following Israel’s surprise strikes on the Iranian sites and growing pressure from proescalation voices inside the administration, Trump was asked about Gabbard’s remarks. “I don’t care what she said,” he told reporters.
That comment wasn’t just dismissive; it served as a directive. Shortly thereafter, Gabbard reversed course — publicly stating that Iran could produce a weapon “within weeks” and claiming she and Trump were “on the same page.” She offered no new intelligence to support the shift and blamed the press for misrepresenting her earlier statements.
That moment, more than the strike itself, crystallized a transformation that appears to be underway. Intelligence assessments are no longer being updated based on new evidence. They are being realigned around political instinct.
This is not a theoretical concern. It is the logical outcome of months of restructuring inside the intelligence community — moves that have received little sustained public attention but carry significant long-term consequences.
Under Gabbard’s tenure, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been steadily refocused to prioritize message discipline over analytic independence. The National Intelligence Council, responsible for producing coordinated assessments across the intelligence community, saw its acting leadership dismissed after producing a judgment on Venezuela that contradicted White House claims.
A Director’s Initiatives Group was established to prescreen sensitive assessments before they reach senior officials. The staff responsible for assembling the president’s daily brief was relocated from CIA headquarters to ODNI’s Liberty Crossing facility, a shift that tightens editorial control under Gabbard’s office.
Presidents have dismissed intelligence, but now it’s different
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
At CIA, an agencywide buyout was offered this spring — providing analysts and officers the option to leave with extended pay and benefits. While sold as a cost-cutting measure, the offer sent a clear message: Those unwilling to adapt to the new order could step aside.
These structural changes are subtle. But their purpose is not. They are reshaping the intelligence community’s function — quietly recasting its role from warning system to narrative validator.
In the aftermath of the strike on Iran, defense officials offered few details, but a new talking point took hold: that leadership, not intelligence, had justified the operation.
In the wake of the strikes, Vice President J.D. Vance defended the operation, noting he trusted Trump’s “instincts” as much as “we trust our intelligence community.” When pressed to explain what intelligence led the administration to launch the strike, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “Forget about the intelligence.”
The remarks reinforced a pattern already taking root in this administration: intuition eclipsing assessment, loyalty outpacing rigor.
The break from intelligence didn’t end with the decision to strike. Recently, Trump dismissed a leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that estimated the setback to Iran’s nuclear program to be only a few months. “The intelligence was very inconclusive,” he said at the NATO summit, insisting the program had been “obliterated.”
This isn’t unfamiliar territory. Presidents have long clashed with intelligence assessments. Successive administrations have struggled with inconvenient judgments — from Lyndon Johnson’s objections to pessimistic reporting on Vietnam to the pressure placed on analysts during the run-up to the Iraq War. But those episodes, however damaging, played out within a structure that at least nominally preserved the independence of the intelligence process. Today, what’s unfolding is not just friction — it appears to be structural displacement.
Intelligence assessments may no longer be seen as reliable
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
This isn’t politicization in the traditional sense. Intelligence is not being rewritten — though the Venezuela controversy suggests pressure was placed on the National Intelligence Council to do just that. But recent actions suggest instinct is now expected to preempt apolitical, objective assessment.
Analysts, for now, might not be directly asked to align their conclusions. But the trend points toward displacement — structures emerging around them designed to produce alignment by default. This is politicization not of the product, but of the process.
In a typical policy disagreement, inconvenient intelligence serves as a constraint. It forces decision-makers to reconcile facts with preferences. But in this current system, that friction appears to be eroding. Preference increasingly drives action – and intelligence appears to follow.
When intelligence analysts internalize that lesson – when they see IC leaders publicly undercut or institutionally sidelined for resisting it – the system begins to self-censor. Dissent recedes. Warning is delayed. Products still carry the appearance of rigor. But the independence that gives them value erodes.
The question is no longer whether intelligence will be politicized. It is whether it will continue to matter.
That shift has consequences beyond Iran. Allies who once relied on the IC to anchor shared threat assessments will wonder if Washington is improvising. Adversaries will recalibrate – not because U.S. action is unpredictable, but because its process is unreadable. If assessments can be reversed without evidence, if officials change positions without citing new information, then the strategic posture of the United States becomes noise – not signal.
The purpose of intelligence is not to confirm a president’s gut instinct. It is to bound uncertainty – to test preconceptions, biases, and preferences, not indulge them.
The people shaping U.S. foreign policy today don’t appear to see it that way. And increasingly, they are building a system that ensures they won’t be challenged. That system won’t collapse in a single moment. It will keep producing assessments. Some will be accurate. But others will be quieted, delayed, softened, or rewritten. And the risk is that when the next crisis comes – whether with China, Russia, or an emerging threat we can’t yet see – the early signals won’t be heard. Or worse, they’ll be heard and ignored.
We are not witnessing the failure of strategic intelligence. We may be witnessing its replacement.
Brian O’Neill is a retired CIA executive who has served in such leadership roles as deputy director of analysis at the National Counterterrorism Center and as executive editor of the President’s Daily Brief. He now teaches national security at Georgia Tech and contributes to the journal “Just Security” and other outlets.
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