Tulsi Gabbard says Iran could produce nuclear weapons “within weeks”, months after she testified before Congress that the country was not building them.

The US Director of National Intelligence said her March testimony – in which she said Iran had a stock of materials but was not building these weapons – had been taken out of context by “dishonest media”.

Her change of position came after Donald Trump said she was “wrong” and that intelligence showed Iran had a “tremendous amount of material” and could have a nuclear weapon “within months”.

Iran has always said that its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and that it has never sought to develop a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday Trump said he was giving Tehran the “maximum” of two weeks to reach a deal on its nuclear activities with Washington. He said he would soon decide whether the US should join Israel’s strikes on Iran.

Disagreement has been building within Trump’s “America First” movement over whether the US should enter the conflict.

On Saturday morning, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country was “absolutely ready for a negotiated solution” on their nuclear programme but that Iran “cannot go through negotiations with the US when our people are under bombardment”.

In her post on social media, Gabbard said US intelligence showed Iran is “at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months”.

“President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree,” she added.

Gabbard shared a video of her full testimony before Congress in March, where she said US intelligence agencies had concluded Iran was not building nuclear weapons.

Experts also determined Iran had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons programme, she added in the clip, even as the nation’s stockpile of enriched uranium – a component of such weapons – was at an all-time high.

In her testimony, she said Iran’s stock was “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons”.

Earlier this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the global nuclear watchdog – expressed concern about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons.

Gabbard’s March testimony has been previously criticised by Trump, who earlier told reporters he did not “care what she said”.

The US president said he believes Iran were “very close to having a weapon” and his country would not allow that to happen.

In 2015, Iran agreed a long-term deal on its nuclear programme with a group of world powers after years of tension over the country’s alleged efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran had been engaging in talks with the US this year over its nuclear programme and was scheduled to hold a further round when Israel launched strikes on Iran on 13 June, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said targeted “the heart” of Iran’s nuclear programme.

“If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu claimed.

Israeli air strikes have destroyed Iranian military facilities and weapons, and killed senior military commanders and nuclear scientists.

Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday that at least 430 people had been killed, while a human rights group, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, put the unofficial death toll at 657 on Friday.

Iran has retaliated with missile and drone strikes against Israel, killing 25 people including one who suffered a heart attack.

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Terrance “T.A.” Dixon, Fat Joe’s former hype man, has filed an incendiary lawsuit in federal court against the rapper. Filed on Thursday, the lawsuit alleges that Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Antonio Cartagena, engaged in “coercive labor exploitation, financial fraud, sexual manipulation, violent intimidation, and psychological coercion.” Dixon asserts that the rapper and his associates deliberately suppressed and erased his contributions to Fat Joe’s success and brand.

Filed in U.S. District Court Southern District of New York, the filing details many disturbing claims about Fat Joe’s sexual relations that it contains a trigger warning on the first page of the 157-page document. Allegedly, Fat Joe engaged in sex with minors on numerous occasions.

According to Dixon, Fat Joe forced him into “humiliating situations, including sex acts performed under duress and surveillance, accompanied by threats of abandonment in foreign countries.” Dixon believes he was coerced into “more than 4,000 sexual acts to maintain his standing within the Enterprise.”

“Defendant was in love with Minor Doe 3,” Dixon claims. “He even contemplated leaving his wife. The Defendant paid all Minor Doe 3’s bills and even took her overseas to his tour stops. He brought her to Florida and would put her up in a condo he rented a few blocks from his house with his wife,” the lawsuit asserts. “In a recorded conversation, Minor Doe 3 and her 15-year-old cousin describe in detail to Plaintiff how ‘inappropriate’ it was for Defendant, who was in his late 30s at the time, to be fawning over children.”

Notably, Dixon is represented by Tyrone Blackburn, who is also the lead counsel in the federal case against Sean “Diddy” Combs. He is seeking up to $20 million in damages.

Fat Joe’s attorney, Joe Tacopina—who has defended many high-profile clients, including Donald Trump and A$AP Rocky—responded to the lawsuit with a statement to Variety. “The lawsuit filed by Tyrone Blackburn and Terrance Dixon is a blatant act of retaliation—a desperate attempt to deflect attention from the civil suit we filed first, which exposed their coordinated scheme to extort [Fat Joe] through lies, threats, and manufactured allegations.”

“Law enforcement is aware of the extortionate demand at the heart of this scheme,” Tacopina’s statement continues. “The allegations against Mr. Cartagena are complete fabrications—lies intended to damage his reputation and force a settlement through public pressure. Mr. Cartagena will not be intimidated. We have taken legal action to expose this fraudulent campaign and hold everyone involved accountable.”

The new filing also names Pete “Pistol Pete” Torres and Richard “Rich Player” Jospitre, listed as key associates in Fat Joe’s “criminal enterprise,” with claims of violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Further, the suit names Jay-Z’s Roc Nation with allegations that the company, which represents Fat Joe, knowingly participated in “concealing, transferring, and manipulating” Dixon’s creative rights and royalty interests.

Defendants allegedly “engaged in deliberate tax fraud schemes” in an effort to conceal their extensive wage theft, artificially inflate Dixon’s tax liabilities, and more. The filing also cites a whistleblower accountant who is said to have come forward last year, as well as recorded phone calls that “helped paint the picture” of the full scope of allegations.

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At least 30 US military planes have been moved from bases in America to Europe over the past three days, flight tracking data reviewed by BBC Verify has shown.

The planes in question are all US military tanker aircraft used to re-fuel fighter jets and bombers. According to Flightradar24, at least seven of these – all KC-135s – stopped off in US airbases in Spain, Scotland and England.

The flights come as Israel and Iran continue to exchange strikes, after Israel launched an operation on Friday that it said was to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme.

It is unclear whether the US movements are directly connected to the conflict, but one expert told BBC Verify that the tanker aircraft flights were “highly unusual”.

Justin Bronk, a senior analyst with the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) think tank, said that the deployments were “highly suggestive” that the US was putting in place contingency plans to “support intensive combat operations” in the region in the coming weeks.

The seven jets tracked by BBC Verify have since travelled on and according to flight tracking data could be seen flying east of Sicily as of Tuesday afternoon. Six had no stated destination – one landed on the Greek island of Crete.

But the former head of Irish Defence Forces, Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett, said that the movements could be part of a broader policy of “strategic ambiguity” that could be attempting to influence Iran to make concessions in talks over its nuclear programme.

Israel initially launched an attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure on Friday, just a day after President Donald Trump’s deadline to Iran to strike a deal on suspending its nuclear programme expired.

The jet movements come amid reports that the US has also moved an aircraft carrier – the USS Nimitz, from the South China Sea towards the Middle East. The Reuters news agency reported that a planned event involving the ship in Vietnam was cancelled after what the US embassy in Hanoi called an “emergent operational requirement”.

MarineTraffic, a ship-tracking website, showed that the USS Nimitz’s last location was in the Malacca Strait heading towards Singapore early on Tuesday. The Nimitz carries a contingent of fighter jets and is escorted by several guided missile destroyers.

The US has also moved F-16, F-22 and F-35 fighter jets to bases in the Middle East, three defence officials told Reuters on Tuesday. The tanker planes moved to Europe over the past several days can be used to re-fuel these jets.

Earlier on Tuesday, Vice-President JD Vance suggested that the US could intervene to support Israel’s campaign, writing on social media that Trump “may decide he needs to take further action” to end Iran’s nuclear programme.

Tehran is believed to run two principal underground enrichment sites. Natanz has already been hit by Israel, and Fordo is buried deep within a mountain complex near the city of Qom.

To penetrate the facility, the US would likely have to use GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) munitions, two senior Western military officers told BBC Verify. MOPs are huge, 30,000lb (13,600kg) bombs also known as “bunker busters”.

The bomb is the only conventional weapon of its kind that is thought to be capable of breaching up to 200ft (60m) of concrete. Only the B-2 stealth bomber can carry the munitions.

Recently, the US has had a squadron of B-2 bombers at its base on the island of Diego Garcia. While the island is some 2,400 miles from Iran’s southern coastline, their location on Diego Garcia would put them well within striking of range of Iran.

“You would be able to maintain a sustained operation from [Diego Garcia] far more efficiently,” Air Marshall Greg Bagwell – a former RAF deputy operations chief – told BBC Verify. “You could literally have them round the clock operating.”

Satellite images first showed B-2 bombers had been stationed on Diego Garcia at the end of March, but the most recent imagery from the island no longer shows the bombers present.

2:04How one US weapon could change the course of the Israel-Iran conflict

Vice-Admiral Mellet said he would expect to see the bombers on the island ahead of any operation targeting Iran and called their absence “a missing piece of the jigsaw”.

Air Marshall Bagwell agreed. But he noted that B-2s have been known to operate for 24 hours at a time and could launch from the continental US if the White House decided to launch a strike.

“They’ve taken away any means for Iran to now defend itself, which obviously leaves any military or even the nuclear targets pretty much at the mercy of whatever Israel wants to do to it.”

Additional reporting by Merlyn Thomas.

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