Secretary of State Marco Rubio is said to be a key adviser as US President Donald Trump navigates the Israel-Iran conflict. Photo / Getty Images via AFP
As then-President-elect Donald Trump assembled his core national security team early this year, congressional and media attention fell on two choices better known for their Fox News appearances and invective against a supposed “deep state” than for their executive branch experience.
Both director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, won Senate confirmation, barely.
But as Trump faces a critical decision about whether to join Israel’s military strikes against Iran’s nuclear programme, perhaps the most momentous of his presidency, neither Gabbard nor Hegseth are playing starring roles as members of Trump’s inner circle of advisers, according to current and former US officials and people close to the White House.
Trump instead has turned to a small group of lower-key but more experienced aides, these people said.
The “Tier One” group advising on a potential US strike on Iran is composed of Vice-President JD Vance, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to an outside White House adviser, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive dynamics.
Together, this quartet is helping Trump as he decides whether to launch weapons only the US possesses to target nuclear enrichment sites in Iran.
Since Friday, Israel has bombed a number of Iranian nuclear sites but been unable to destroy deeply buried uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz.
US strikes would bring Washington into a new Middle East war with uncertain consequences, invite Iran’s promised retaliation against US military bases in the region, and potentially shake the global economy.
Trump said that he has not decided yet whether he will authorise a strike against Iran.
His public statements have veered back and forth in recent weeks between a professed desire for a diplomatic deal that would eliminate Tehran’s nuclear programme and martial threats, such as a social media post demanding Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER”.
“The President changes his position so quickly that it is hard to keep anybody in the loop,” said Senator Jack Reed, top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I’m sure he’s not calling any of his advisers at 1 o’clock in the morning when he says ‘unconditional surrender’ and things like that. That’s one of the problems.”
Spokespeople for Gabbard and Hegseth disputed that the two were not fully engaged in advising Trump.
The President, who often operates on gut instinct, also is navigating the crisis without many of the support structures his predecessors have leaned on.
Last month, the White House dismissed scores of professional staffers at the National Security Council, which co-ordinates US security agencies to assess and prepare options for the president.
Rubio is also serving as Trump’s national security adviser after predecessor Michael Waltz was pushed aside.
Trump has imposed deep cuts on other arms of government, including the State Department and international broadcast operations that predecessors have used to reach foreign populations.
In one telling example, about 75 employees of the Voice of America, mostly from its Persian news division, were recalled from administrative leave last Friday amid the escalating warfare between Israel and Iran.
Among his national security aides, Trump has soured on Gabbard in recent months following a series of public controversies involving her and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which she oversees, according to people familiar with the situation.
On June 10, Gabbard posted a video on social media in which she describes a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan, which the US struck with a nuclear weapon at the end of World War II, and discusses at length the horrors of nuclear war.
“As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she says in the video.
Gabbard, who served in the military in Iraq and elsewhere, has frequently spoken of the importance of avoiding fresh conflicts.
The video, posted as Trump and his advisers were poring over intelligence indicating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would strike Iran, deeply angered Trump.
He confronted Gabbard at a White House meeting with others present, telling her, “I saw the video, and I didn’t like it,” the outside adviser said.
Appearing before Congress in March, Gabbard testified that US intelligence agencies assessed that Iran, despite its uranium enrichment work, has not restarted a nuclear weapons programme it halted in 2003.
Her statement accurately reflected intelligence agencies’ conclusions, but when asked about it on Wednesday as he rushed back to Washington from the G7 summit in Canada, Trump was blunt. “I don’t care what she said,” he replied. “I think they were very close to having one.”
Gabbard later told reporters that she and the President were on the same page, and her job does not appear to be in immediate jeopardy.
Vance came to her defence yesterday, saying in a statement: “She’s an essential member of our national security team, and we’re grateful for her tireless work to keep America safe from foreign threats”.
Gabbard “remains focused on her mission: providing accurate and actionable intelligence to the President, cleaning up the Deep State, and keeping the American people safe, secure, and free”, ODNI press secretary, Olivia Coleman, said in a statement.
In closed-door meetings on Israel and Iran at the White House and a June 8 gathering at the Camp David presidential retreat, Ratcliffe and his aides have delivered regular intelligence updates for Trump on the Middle East conflict, current and former US officials said.
Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, was on reserve duty and did not attend the Camp David meeting.
The CIA chief’s analysis of Iran’s nuclear programme is pessimistic and closer to Trump’s.
According to two people familiar with his testimony, Ratcliffe used a football analogy in a closed-door Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday to argue that the formal US intelligence assessment that Iran has not decided to build a bomb is of limited use.
“It’s like saying a football team marched 99 yards down the field, got to the one-yard line and, oh, they don’t have the intention to score,” one of the people quoted him as telling lawmakers.
As the US moves additional military forces into the Middle East to help defend Israel from Iranian counter-strikes, protect US assets and possibly launch bunker-busting bombs at Iran’s buried nuclear sites, Trump is relying more on a pair of four-star generals than on Hegseth, his Defence Secretary, according to three US officials.
The generals are Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman; and Army General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of US Central Command, which has operational authority for the Middle East.
Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said it is “completely false” that the Defence Secretary is disengaged.
“The Secretary is speaking with the President multiple times a day each day and has been with the President in the Situation Room this week,” Parnell said in a statement.
“Secretary Hegseth is providing the leadership the Department of Defence and our Armed Forces need, and he will continue to work diligently in support of President Trump’s peace through strength agenda.”
But two current US officials said Kurilla and Caine have taken the lead on discussing military options with Trump, largely sidestepping Hegseth and his team at the Pentagon.
“Nobody is talking to Hegseth,” one official said. “There is no interface operationally between Hegseth and the White House at all.”
Kurilla has voiced support for an aggressive posture against Iran, which has backed militias in numerous attacks on US forces in the Middle East, including a drone attack last year in Jordan that killed three American soldiers.
Still, Kurilla has not leaned one way or another in whether to strike Iran and has presented a wide range of options to the President, one of the US officials said.
Caine has also provided feedback to the president regarding the different scenarios of US intervention, a defence official said. He is mindful of the second- and third-order effects that may take place and is “focused on today and really interested in tomorrow”, the official said.
Hegseth was engaged early in his role as Defence Secretary, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But the fallout from the Signalgate controversy, during which he shared sensitive operational details on a group chat that inadvertently included a prominent journalist, and his preoccupation with leaks and distrust in the Pentagon have distracted him from substantial policy matters, the person said.
The outside adviser described Rubio as being on good terms with other members of the Trump’s inner circle, and “very deferential” to Trump.
- Dan Lamothe and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
Discussion about the war’s toll in Gaza, they say, is rare in Israeli high schools.
