From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, March 19th.

Well, the Iran War continues to widen, not narrow. What's narrowing appears to be the

Strait of Hormuz and the options for

trying to reopen it. There's apparently an important new division, too, between the U.S. and Israel

over how much more to widen the war. Israel attacked a big Iranian gas field. You've probably

heard this by now. President Trump responded by saying he didn't know about it.

Iran responded by attacking another part of that gas field that's in Qatar. Trump is telling both of them,

not just Iran, to cut it out. World energy prices have jumped again this morning in response to these

Israeli and Iranian attacks. And if you aren't confused

enough about the reasons the U.S. went to war with Iran in the first place, I'm going to play

an exchange at a Senate hearing yesterday with Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

Remember, Trump and Gabbard's handpicked director of counterterrorism, Joe Kent, had just resigned in

protest of the war the day before yesterday, saying the claim that Iran posed an imminent threat

was false. So in this exchange, Democratic Senator John Ossoff of Georgia questions gabbered about her previous findings

compared to the imminent threat justification for the war. This runs a minute and a half.

That opening statement, as submitted to the committee in advance of this hearing, stated that as a

result of last summer's air strikes,

quote, Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated, end quote, correct? That's right.

And is that, in fact, the assessment of the intelligence community? Yes. So the assessment of the

intelligence community is that Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated by last summer's airstrikes.

Yes.

In the opening statement you submitted to the committee last night also stated, quote,

...