By Aaron Blake, CNN
(CNN) — Top Trump administration officials testified publicly Wednesday for the first time since the launch of the Iran war three weeks ago.
Officials including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, where they were pressed on the administration’s often-confusing and contradictory claims about the Iran war and the underlying intelligence.
The testimony came a day after the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, became the highest-profile Trump administration official to resign over the war. Kent did so while suggesting the administration had lied about Iran posing an imminent threat.
Here’s what to know from Wednesday’s hearing:
Intel officials contradicted or failed to back up Trump’s biggest claims about the war
The biggest question going into the hearing was what these officials would say about the Trump administration’s many dubious claims about the Iran war. These officials see the intelligence after all, and they were testifying under penalty of perjury.
Wednesday, they repeatedly either contradicted Trump and the administration’s claims or failed to back them up.
On Iran’s nuclear program, Trump has stated that Iran had “attempted to rebuild their nuclear program” after his June strikes on that program, and he said in his State of the Union address last month that they were “starting it all over.”
White House adviser Steve Witkoff went further, saying Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.” And the White House has cited an “imminent nuclear threat” posed by Iran.
But Gabbard in her prepared opening statement told a far different tale.
“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer (in June), Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated,” she said. “There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”
Gabbard notably did not read this portion of her opening statement. When pressed on why, she said it was because her “time was running long.”
When asked by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia whether that remained the assessment of the intelligence community, she said, “Yes.”
Also in his State of the Union address, Trump claimed Iran was building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would “soon reach the United States of America.”
But that’s not what US intelligence has said. And Gabbard in her prepared statement reiterated a previous assessment that Iran “could use” existing technology “to begin to develop a militarily viable ICBM before 2035 should Tehran attempt to pursue that capability.” Gabbard said that assessment would be updated in light of the current war.
When Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton of Arkansas cited other analysts’ estimates that Iran could have had an ICBM “to threaten the United States in as few as six months,” Ratcliffe declined to put a date range on it.
Ratcliffe instead said Cotton was right to be concerned, and that “if left unimpeded … they would have the ability to range missile