Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard distanced herself — to a degree — on Thursday from two aides who have taken hostile stances toward the U.S.’ Middle East policy: the recently departed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, and the recently hired Dan Caldwell.

Kent resigned from the administration this week with a conspiratorial letter condemned by many as antisemitic, claiming that there was no imminent threat from Iran and that Israel and pro-Israel advocates in the U.S. had tricked the administration into joining it.

“He said a lot of things in that letter,” Gabbard said, when first asked at a House Intelligence Committee hearing if she agreed with Kent’s letter. “Ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him.” 

Pressed again on whether Kent’s comments blaming Israel concern her, Gabbard affirmed that they do.

Regarding Caldwell — a prominent GOP isolationist who was reportedly hired to serve in the ODNI, Gabbard’s agency, after being fired amid a leak investigation from the Pentagon last year — Gabbard denied personal knowledge of him and claimed he would have no influence over intelligence products.

“My understanding is one of my elements sought to hire Dan Caldwell months ago for a purely administrative role that would not have any position over the intelligence analysis or assessments on any topic,” Gabbard said.

Pressed on her own personal views on the war in and threat from Iran, Gabbard declined to specify. The intelligence chief was previously outspoken as a member of Congress and then as a political commentator against a conflict with the Islamic Republic, which she had said would be unconstitutional and devastating on a scale not seen this century.

Gabbard said Thursday that her job requires her to set aside her own personal beliefs to prevent politicization of the U.S. intelligence products.

“The cost of war weighs very heavily upon me and my colleagues here, especially for those of us who have experienced and seen the cost firsthand,” Gabbard said. “My own personal and political views, as I mentioned earlier, I was asked and required by Congress and by the president in this role as the director of national intelligence to check those views at the door, to ensure that the intelligence assessments are not colored by my personal views.”

Pressed on the reasoning for the war in Iran, CIA Director John Ratcliffe affirmed that Israel did not force the U.S.’ hand in starting the war, an assessment with which Gabbard agreed.

Ratcliffe emphasized throughout the hearing that, regardless of whether the Iranian government theoretically maintained an edict prohibiting the development of nuclear weapons, it was stockpiling uranium enriched to 60% purity, for which there is no civilian purpose and which no other country has done without subsequently trying to obtain nuclear weapons.

“Much has been made by some about a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding the fatwa, what we know — the intelligence community is in agreement on this — is that Iran possesses at least 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to weapons grade 60%,” Ratcliffe said. “The only use for that would be the development of nuclear weapons.”

“​​Our intelligence is also clear that they have not lost their ambition and that the activities to rebuild or reconstitute their nuclear facilities and centrifuges [continued],” he added.

Gabbard said that the intelligence community has “high confidence” that it knows where Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is located.

Prior to last summer’s U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Gabbard had said that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon, an assessment that President Donald Trump later dismissed as incorrect. She also said that lawmakers had mischaracterized her past remarks and assessment.

During the hearing, Gabbard said that, given the elimination of many in Iran’s top echelons, current U.S. intelligence and understanding of the Iranian leadership and its intentions is less clear than before the war, but described the new supreme leader, Mojataba Khamenei, as more extreme than his father.

“To be clear on Mojtaba, the son who has been named to replace [former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], it is unclear of his status or his involvement,” Gabbard said. “He was injured very severely through Israeli strikes, and so the decision-making is unclear about what’s happening in the Iranian leadership.”

Gabbard emphasized that the Israeli government’s own goals for its operations are not necessarily the same as those of the Trump administration — noting that the Israeli military has focused on eliminating Iranian leaders, while the U.S. is focused on Iranian military capabilities.

She said she does not know Israel’s own position on a potential deal with Iran, or have any information on Israel’s decisions to strike Iranian energy infrastructure. “I’m not privy to any of their deliberations or into their calculus and launching this or other attacks. I’m not, we are not involved with the operational element of this,” Gabbard said.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said that he supported the action by the U.S. and Israel to eliminate Iranian leaders and missile capabilities, but said that the administration needs to explain its actions and goals more fully to the American public.

Under questioning from Gottheimer, the intelligence officials affirmed that Trump had been briefed on the possibility of disruptions to global energy markets and a potential hard-line shift in Iranian leadership as a result of the war.

Gabbard said that, while the FBI has been having success in disrupting attempted terrorist attacks at home, those efforts have been stymied by the fact that some homegrown extremists may not have direct contact with foreign terrorist organizations.

FBI Director Kash Patel pushed back on accusations from Democrats that he had undermined and crippled U.S. counterterrorism efforts against Iran. Democrats repeatedly highlighted the firing of agents assigned to counter-Iran efforts, reportedly due to their past involvement in investigations of Trump.

Patel initially declined to comment on the firings pending litigation, but later said that any firings would be the result of internal misconduct investigations by career officials, regardless of other circumstances. Despite ongoing efforts to push officials connected with investigations of Trump out of the government, Patel largely downplayed his personal knowledge of the agents in question.

He also insisted that the FBI’s Iran team is strong, noting that it has tracked a 43% increase in Iranian espionage and attempted attacks, and that it has more than 300 ongoing terrorism-related investigations on Iran.

And Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) took a swipe at conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who has claimed he’s under investigation by the federal government. Crenshaw, questioning witnesses about federal foreign surveillance authorities, surmised that Carlson’s communications with Iranian officials had likely been captured through existing targeting of those Iranians — not by efforts targeted at Carlson himself.

“When somebody, and let’s say their name rhymes with, I don’t know, ‘Tucker Carlson’ is claiming that the CIA is spying on him — I’m going to guess here, because I don’t know — I’m going to guess that the most likely scenario is that, in the process of him speaking with Iranian intelligence officials, it is incidentally collected,” Crenshaw said. “Nobody is spying on Tucker Carlson, or his inbox — to my knowledge, at least.”