Is Iran close to building a nuke?

"My intelligence community is wrong."

With those words, Donald Trump waved away the advice of the entire US spy infrastructure — from the CIA, to the Defence Intelligence Agency, to the intelligence arms of the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force — and its assessment that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon.

That assessment was presented to the US Congress in March by Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's hand-picked director of National Intelligence.

"The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon," Ms Gabbard said.

"Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised a nuclear weapon program that he suspended in 2003."

On Wednesday, Donald Trump said simply, "She's wrong."

As is so often the case under Trump, what once would have been a breathtaking shattering of norms is just another day.

Trump's rejection of the intelligence community's advice has deep resonance in the United States, and particularly among Trump's MAGA base in the Republican Party.

Trump campaigned hard on keeping America out of foreign 'forever' wars like Iraq, based on faulty intelligence over Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

It's why key figures in Trump's MAGA, America First base of support are dead against any US involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict.

But there are influential old-school Republican Iran hawks, like Senator Lindsey Graham, who are pushing the president for regime change in Iran.

"Be all in, President Trump, in helping Israel eliminate the nuclear threat," Senator Graham said.

"If we need to provide bombs to Israel, provide bombs. If we need to fly planes with Israel, do joint operations.

"But here's the bigger question: Wouldn't the world be better off if the ayatollahs went away and were replaced by something better? Wouldn't Iran be better off?"

The two sides met head-on in a fiery exchange between media figure Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz, both firm Trump supporters.

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"How many people live in Iran, by the way?" Carlson asked.

"I don't know the population at all," Cruz replied.

Carlson was incredulous. "You don't know the population you seek to topple?"

The big question is — which side is getting in the president's ear as he waits to decide on whether the US will attack Iran?

Gabbard says she's been taken 'out of context'

Tulsi Gabbard certainly appears to be on the outer.

Today, she took to X to try to repair the relationship with Trump.

"The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division," she wrote.

"America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can't happen, and I agree."

The "missing" context was that Iran's enriched uranium stockpile was "at its highest levels, and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons".

She also testified that nuclear weapons advocates in the Iranian leadership were feeling "emboldened".

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also recently found that Iran has not been complying with weapons inspectors since 2019 — its first such finding in two decades.

In the end, none of that may matter.

Donald Trump has said he will decide in two weeks about whether to choose the military or diplomatic option.

He may be waiting to see which option is more likely to succeed — or which way the debate among his supporters goes.