Democratic senator suggests Trump is contradicting intelligence consensus over Iran nuclear weapon development

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested President Donald Trump is contradicting what he described as the consensus opinion of the intelligence community. "We got a brief as recently as Monday, that seems ages ago, that said the intelligence community has not changed their assessment that Iran had not moved toward an actual weaponization," Warner told CNN’s Katie Hunt, adding: "And if this president is going to suddenly blow off all of the consensus opinion of the intelligence community, well, what are these folks’ job?"Their job is to speak truth to power, not cook the books," Warner continued. "When you cook intelligence, you end up with a war like Iraq, where a president at that point didn’t follow the intelligence and the intelligence was manipulated. I worry that we may be seeing some of that going on." His comments come as the president said on Wednesday that he believes Iran was "a few weeks away" from having a nuclear weapon – and as the administration has sent mixed signals on what intelligence it has around Iran’s nuclear progress. Warner said that even he — as part of a high-ranking group in Congress who has access to classified national security information — does not know what the Trump administration’s plans are for US involvement in the conflict. "We’re supposed to know," Warner said. "I have no foggy idea what this administration’s plans are or what the foreign policy is vis-a-vis Iran." A White House official responded to Warner’s comments by pointing to a post from the administration’s rapid response X account. The post mentions recent comments from US Central Command chief Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla citing the International Atomic Energy Agency saying, "Should the Regime decide to sprint to a nuclear weapon, it is estimated that current stockpiles and the available centrifuges across several enrichment plants are sufficient to produce its first 25 kg of weapons-grade material in roughly one week and enough for up to ten nuclear weapons in three weeks." Remember: When Israel launched its series of strikes against Iran, it also issued a number of dire warnings about the country’s nuclear program, suggesting Iran was fast approaching a point of no return in its quest to obtain nuclear weapons and that the strikes were necessary to preempt that outcome. But CNN reported that US intelligence assessments had reached a different conclusion: Not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing, according to four people familiar with the assessment. This post was updated with a response from the administration.