US and Israel war aims in Iran are not the same, US spy chief says

Summary

• US and Israeli objectives in the war on Iran differ, with Israel targeting Iranian leadership and the US aiming to destroy Iran's missile programme and navy.
• Despite coordination in joint air assaults, US intel highlights conflicting messages on Iran's nuclear programme and disagreements over targeting energy infrastructure.
• Joe Kent resigned over the Iran War. Tulsi Gabbard said Trump determines imminent threats, amid questions about justification for the air assault.

WASHINGTON - American and Israeli objectives for the war on Iran are not the same, US director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on March 19, with Israel focused on disabling Iran’s leadership and US President Donald Trump focused on destroying Iran’s ballistic missile programme and navy.

“The objectives that have been laid out by the president are different from the objectives that have been laid out by the Israeli government,” Ms Gabbard told the House intelligence committee’s annual hearing on worldwide threats to the United States.

“We can see through the operations that the Israeli government has been focused on disabling the Iranian leadership. The president has stated that his objectives are to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability, and their navy,” she said.

The US and Israel have repeatedly sought to highlight their close coordination in their joint air assault on Iran, but officials on both sides have acknowledged that their objectives were not the same.

As the conflict neared the three-week mark, Israel has led strikes that have killed Iranian clerics and military leaders, while the US has been focused on striking sites related to the country’s missile programme.

The Republican president’s administration has given conflicting messages about the state of Iran’s nuclear programme. In the run-up to the war, some top administration officials said Iran was weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, although others - including the president - claimed that another US-Israeli campaign last summer had destroyed its weapons programme.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme was for peaceful purposes.

Ms Gabbard said during the two-and-a-half-hour House hearing on March 19 that the US intelligence community had “high confidence” that it knows where Iran keeps its stockpile of highly enriched uranium but declined to discuss in a public session whether the US has the means to destroy it.

Gas field attack

The gap was highlighted on the night of March 18, when Mr Trump said in a social media post that Washington “knew nothing” about Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, which drew an Iranian assault on energy infrastructure in Qatar, and that Israel would not attack the field further unless Iran again attacked Qatar.

Ms Gabbard said she did not have an answer when Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas asked to what she attributed Israel’s decision to strike Iranian energy infrastructure despite Mr Trump calling for those facilities to be off-limits.

Ms Gabbard’s appearance in the House was her second straight day of testimony, after she, CIA director John Ratcliffe and other intelligence agency directors also testified to the Senate intelligence panel on March 18.

At both hearings, Ms Gabbard was questioned about whether she felt Iran had posed an “imminent” threat to the US to justify the air assault by the US and Israel that began on Feb 28.

Mr Joe Kent, who headed the National Counterterrorism Centre, on March 17 became the first senior official in Trump’s administration to resign over the Iran War, saying Iran posed no imminent threat to the US.

Ms Gabbard said in both hearings that it was solely up to Trump to determine whether the US faces an imminent threat. REUTERS