A plume of smoke rises following a U.S.-Israeli military strike in Tehran, Iran.Vahid Salemi/AP
When Donald Trump announced the launch of his war on Iran in a videotaped message, he declared he was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” If there were indications that Tehran was about to strike American targets, that would have been reflected in US intelligence reports. Yet a member of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), says that no such intelligence was shared with the committee and that the Trump administration for months had refused to provide intelligence on Iran to the committee. “We were kept in the dark,” he notes.
In an interview with Mother Jones, Gomez contends that there is no reason to believe Trump’s claim of an imminent threat, and maintains that Trump was just spinning the nation into a war of choice. He also notes that if the Democrats win control of the House in the coming midterm elections, the House intelligence committee is likely to mount an investigation of the pre-war intelligence, as well as Trump’s use and possible misrepresentation of intelligence regarding other national security matters, including the attack on Venezuela: “We not only have an obligation but we do have a right to conduct these investigations. We have to see if intelligence was politicized…We have to know what really happened….I’m looking forward to holding them accountable.”
Gomez adds, “There are things we have to look at that people don’t even know about, and they’ll never know about.” That sounds ominous.
The Trump administration, he says, “never came to show us the evidence there was an imminent threat to the United States.” The flow of intelligence was shut down after media reports noted intelligence assessments of Trump’s air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June did not back up Trump’s claim the sites had been “obliterated.” And, according to Gomez, the Republicans on the House intelligence committee have not pushed for more access to Iran intelligence. “Now that they have a Republican president, the oversight is not as robust as it was during the Biden administration,” he says.
“There’s no way people should trust what the administration is saying,” he comments. “They’re trying to find facts on the ground to justify whatever goal they have.” Gomez points out that though Trump has said Tehran posed an immediate danger to the United States due to its ballistic missile program, the Defense Department has concluded they are ten years away from developing missiles that can strike America.
