3/19 - Jessica Rosenthal, FOX News

Congress hearing from several intelligence leaders in the intelligence community about the situation with Iran. Fox News Radio's Jessica Rosenthal joins us now on the latest on the Senate hearing on worldwide threats with the head of DNI, FBI, CIA. Good morning, Jessica. What were some of the big talking points? Yeah, so the focus ended up, as you might imagine, being on Iran and Operation Epic Fury and 2D and we see that Tulsi Gabbard right now is testifying before the House and she testified yesterday before the Senate. In her prepared remarks, she said the regime in Iran appears to be intact. but largely degraded, that conventional military power projection is largely destroyed, but that Iran and its proxies do remain capable of and continue to attack U.S. and allied interests, that a surviving regime would pursue a year-long effort to rebuild its missile and drone capabilities. The focus from Democratic senators was on whether or not there was an imminent threat. requiring action when the president took it in late February. And it was towards the end of the hearing during questioning with Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff when Tulsi Gabbard said, it is not the intelligence community's responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat. That that's up to the president. He interrupted her and said false. It's precisely your responsibility. This is an assessment hearing and we're looking for your assessment. It was actually, though, when asked about the resignation this week of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, and his claim that Iran did not pose an imminent threat when he resigned. It was CIA director John Ratcliffe who spoke up and said he disagreed that Iran did pose an immediate threat at this time. There were other topics of conversation, but... During senators questioning, it really was all about Iran and Operation Epic Fury. And Joe Kent, of course, now after he has resigned as Director of Counterintelligence or Deputy Director of Counterintelligence resigning, he is now being investigated by the FBI. One of the things that was interesting is that in Tulsi Gabbard's... written prepared statements. She said Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated, but she chose to leave that out when she was speaking and senators questioned her on that. Anything unusual there? Well, Senator Warner of Virginia said, why did you leave that out? She said I was simply trying, she said she realized that she was going really long, and she decided to skip it. Warner said it was because it conflicted with what the president says. But the president has also said that their nuclear facilities were obliterated. I think the issue then might be this, existing enriched uranium that was enriched before.