WASHINGTON — President Trump tore into the US intelligence community on Friday for having been “wrong” about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear weapon months ago, telling reporters that he now believes Tehran has a “tremendous amount” of enriched uranium that could build a bomb in just a few weeks.
Trump made the assessment after breaking from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony before Congress in March that Iran was not building nuclear weapons.
“What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence that they are at this point,” the reporter asked Trump on the tarmac outside of Bedminster, New Jersey.
“Then my intelligence community is wrong,” the president said, asking who said that.
“She’s wrong,” he said of Gabbard.
The spy chief had also noted in her testimony that Iran’s uranium stockiples were at unprecedented levels for a non-nuclear state.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that “Iran has all that it needs to keep a nuclear weapon” and “all they need is a decision from the Supreme leader to do that.”
Trump was more lenient in his approximation Friday, saying it was either a “matter of weeks” or a “matter of months” before Tehran had all the components.
The president announced Thursday that he would be making his final decision on whether to strike Iran using the US military “within the next two weeks” if Tehran doesn’t “come to their senses” about the need to eliminate its nuclear program.
“We’re going to see what that period of time is, but I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump added Friday.
He appeared to rule out using US ground forces to invade Iran.
“Well, I’m not going to talk about ground forces. The last thing you want to do is ground force,” the commander-in-chief said.
Iran’s foreign minister earlier on Friday had rejected the notion of a cease-fire in the conflict.
“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump also said of potentially calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and telling him to halt the strikes on Iran.
“If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll see what happens.”
European officials also met with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier Friday, but Trump said those talks won’t bear fruit.
“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe,” he told reporters. “We’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”
