The ghost of Iraq War lurks behind Trump and Gabbard’s split

How close is Iran to developing nuclear weapons? Donald Trump’s decision on whether to join the Israeli military campaign is a central question.

The issue raises concerns about the looming threat of U.S. and regional stability, clearly creating a breakthrough between the president and one of his top advisers.

It also reflects a debate raised by another Republican White House a few years ago during another Middle East crisis.

When Air Force One returned early from the G7 Summit in Canada, Trump was asked whether his National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard agreed to March testimony, believing he agreed to Iran’s failure to build a nuclear bomb.

“I don’t care what she said,” he said, thinking Iran was “very close to the bomb.”

In Congressional testimony, Gabbard said that U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Iran had not resumed its 2003 nuclear weapons program, which was suspended in 2003, even if the country had reserved rich uranium, an integral part of this weapon, which was the highest in history.

Following Trump’s comments on Tuesday, Gabbard pointed out that uranium enrichment levels were evidence that she and the president “on the same page” when they shared their attention.

In view of her past criticism of U.S. intelligence agencies, she is willing to meet with American opponents such as the ousted Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and her outspoken oppositional foreign policy perspectives.

The former Democratic presidential candidate once recognized Senator Bernie Sanders in a White House bid, who broke into the Democratic Party in 2022 and endorsed Trump last year.

Her Senate voted 52-48 in February as evidence of Trump’s voice in his White House.

Despite Gabbard’s assertions to the contrary, the president’s remarks represent a complete dismissal of his intelligence minister’s sworn in office testimony – which may indicate that Iran Hawks has the upper hand in the White House.

While another non-interventionist Vice President JD Vance defended Gabbard, he also expressed support for everything Trump chose to do in Iran.

“I believe the president has won some trust on this issue,” Vance wrote on Tuesday. “I can assure you that he is only interested in using the U.S. military to achieve the goals of the American people.”

The obvious Trump-Gabbard division has also been swept over Trump’s increasingly fierce rift in the “American First” movement, whether the United States should enter the Israel-Iran conflict.

Those who think Iran is close to the bomb — including Pete Hegseth, the Defense Minister of Congress and the Israeli government, cited the IAEA’s determination last week that Iran violated the nuclear non-proliferation treaty for the first time in 20 years.

Advocates of U.S. non-intervention, such as conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, argued that evidence of supporting the Iranian bomb was exaggerated to prove the change in the Iranian regime and military adventurism.

“The real difference is not those who support Israel and those who support Iran or Palestinians,” Carlson wrote on X last week. “The real gap is the gap between those who casually encourage violence and those who seek to prevent it.”

They also pointed to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and said that the U.S. attack on Iran is triple twice as much as a population, which would be an equally disastrous foreign policy decision.

The George W Bush administration warned Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to the terrorist threat to the United States, believing its 2003 invasion was justified on the grounds that it ultimately proved unfounded.

“Faced with obvious evidence of danger, we can’t wait to see the final evidence in the form of mushroom clouds,” Bush said in an October 2002 televised speech.

The government sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations, where he held up a small vial, which he said represents only a small portion of the weaponized anthrax bacteria that Iraq possesses.

“These are not assertions,” Powell said. “What we give you is facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”

Questions about the authenticity of these intelligence discoveries and the unpopular, expensive and bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq, which had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, led to subsequent elections and democratic election achievements in dissent among Republicans.

By 2016, Republican dissatisfaction with their political institutions paved the way for Iraqi war critic Trump to win the party’s presidential nomination and the White House.

Nine years later, despite conclusions from the U.S. intelligence agency, Trump is still considering Middle East military interventions, not because of them.

Although conservatives like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham say it’s time to change the regime, the White House seems to have few ways of conducting a full-scale invasion and state-building work in Iraq in 2003.

However, military operations can develop in unpredictable ways.

Although Trump is in a different state of circumstances – and is considering a different course of action than his Republican predecessor, the consequences of his relying on or dismissing the findings of his intelligence advisers may be just as important.