By Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - Iran's government has been degraded since the war began on February 28, but it appears to be intact and Tehran and its proxies remain capable of attacking U.S. and allies' interests in the Middle East, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Wednesday.
"The regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded by Operation Epic Fury," Gabbard said, referring to the U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran, in her opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee's annual hearing on Worldwide Threats to the United States.
"Even so, Iran and its proxies remain capable of and continue to attack U.S. and allied interests in the Middle East. If a hostile regime survives, it will seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its missiles and UAV (drone) forces," Gabbard said.
The hearing was Gabbard's first significant public appearance in months.
The hearing largely focused on the Iran war, now in its third week, as lawmakers - including some of President Donald Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats - have said they want more information about an air campaign that has killed thousands of people, disrupted the lives of millions and shaken energy and stock markets.
Democrats in particular have complained that the administration has not kept Congress adequately informed about a conflict that has cost U.S. taxpayers billions, and demanded public testimony rather than classified briefings held in the past two weeks.
"The complete lack of clarity should matter to everybody," Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said after a testy exchange with CIA Director John Ratcliffe about the U.S. plan for eliminating the threat from Iran.
FIRST MAJOR RESIGNATION OVER THE WAR
The hearing with Gabbard, Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and other intelligence officials also touched on the shock announcement on Tuesday that a top aide to Gabbard had resigned, citing the war.
Joe Kent, who headed the National Counterterrorism Center, is the first senior official in Trump's administration to resign over the conflict.
The Office of the DNI oversees the counterterrorism center and Kent is close with Gabbard.
"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful lobby," Kent wrote in a letter posted to social media.
Ratcliffe said during the hearing that he disagreed with Kent. "I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time and posed an immediate threat at this time," he said.
The threat assessment Gabbard presented to the committee added to confusion over the state of Iran's nuclear program. Some administration officials said in the run-up to the war that Iran was weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, one of the reasons given for starting the airstrikes.
In her prepared remarks, which were posted by the committee just before the hearing, Gabbard said Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated in U.S. and Israeli strikes in June and Washington had seen no effort since to rebuild its enrichment capability. However, when she spoke to the senators, Gabbard said the intelligence community assessed Iran was trying to recover from damage to its infrastructure in July.
WHAT WAS TRUMP TOLD?
Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who chairs the committee, praised Trump in his opening statement, saying his actions in Iran and elsewhere had made the world safer.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee's vice chairman, criticized the administration for failing to hold briefings for Congress on the war and other matters. He also bashed Gabbard for investigating elections in the United States, while the agency has cut staff involved in activity like monitoring Iran.
Questions have swirled around what Trump was told before he decided to join with Israel in striking Iran.
Sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports have said Trump was warned, for example, that attacking Iran could trigger retaliation against U.S. Gulf allies despite his claims on Monday that Tehran's reaction came as a surprise.
Trump’s assertion followed other administration claims that have not been backed by U.S. intelligence reporting, such as that Iran would soon have a missile capable of hitting the U.S. homeland and that it would need two to four weeks to make a nuclear bomb.
Trump was also briefed ahead of the operation that Tehran would likely seek to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major global shipping route for oil and gas, according to two other sources familiar with the matter.
Gabbard declined to comment on whether she had briefed Trump or was asked to brief him on the chance that Iran would strike adjacent Gulf nations and close the strait if it were attacked, saying only that the intelligence community was providing Trump with "all the best objective intelligence available to inform his decisions."
The House of Representatives intelligence committee is due to hold its worldwide threats hearing on Thursday.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Don Durfee, Cynthia Osterman and Nia Williams)
