WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday called top US intelligence chiefs “extremely passive and naive” on Iran and dismissed their assessments of the threat posed by North Korea a day after they contradicted his views during congressional testimony.
Leaders of the US intelligence community told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the nuclear threat from North Korea remained but that Iran was not taking steps toward making a nuclear bomb, differing with Trump’s views on those countries.
“The Intelligence people seem to be extremely inert and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” Trump said in a Twitter post.
The Republican president said Iran was “coming very close to the edge” and suggested. “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
Trump last year pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran put in place under his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran.
The US intelligence officials told the Senate Intelligence Committee Iran was not developing nuclear weapons in violation of the 2015 nuclear agreement, even though Tehran threatened to reverse some commitments after Trump pulled the United States of the deal.
Their assessments also broke with other assertions by Trump, including on the threat posed by Russia to US elections, the threat that the Daesh militant group poses in Syria and North Korea’s commitment to denuclearize.
Trump has fray with leaders of the US intelligence community, most strikingly in disputing their finding that Russia intervened in the 2016 US election to help him win the presidency.
