Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said that Kim Jong Un's regime has "halted some provocative behavior" related to its nuclear program and that the country has not conducted any nuclear tests in more than a year. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Foreign Policy U.S. intelligence chief breaks with Trump on North Korea, Iran, ISIS Dan Coats says North Korea is not likely to give up its nukes and that ISIS is far from defeated.

America's top intelligence official on Tuesday publicly broke with President Donald Trump on several critical foreign policy fronts, saying North Korea is not likely to give up its nuclear weapons, Iran is not yet seeking a nuclear weapon and the Islamic State terrorist group remains a forceful presence in Iraq and Syria.

The remarks by Dan Coats, the U.S. director of national intelligence, underscored how out of step Trump's pronouncements on major national security issues often are with the rest of the government he leads, including intelligence agencies that he has long scorned.


The divergence on Tuesday was perhaps most notable in the case of North Korea, which Trump has said no longer poses a nuclear threat to the United States.

"We currently assess that North Korea will seek to retain its [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival," Coats said during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Trump is due to hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February. Just last week, the president maintained that the two sides are making progress in efforts to fully denuclearize the Korean peninsula, tweeting that "this is more than has ever been accomplished with North Korea" and that he expects "much progress" when the two leaders next meet.

But analysts and former U.S. officials have long cast doubt on Trump's optimistic assessments. A report from a think tank, Beyond Parallel, released last week revealed another undeclared North Korean missile site.

Coats also offered views on Iran's nuclear capabilities that appeared at odds with the president.

Trump and his top aides have taken a hard line on Iran, implying that the Islamist-led country still poses a nuclear threat despite its adherence to a 2015 accord that put curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that nuclear deal, and has reimposed sanctions, although other international allies have stayed committed to the pact.

During the hearing, Coats said Iran isn't taking any steps to make a nuclear weapon. “We do not believe Iran is currently undertaking the key activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device," he said.

CIA Director Gina Haspel, who also spoke at the hearing, said Tehran, "at the moment, technically they're in compliance" with the deal.

But Coats also noted that Iranian officials have “publicly threatened to push the boundaries” of the nuclear deal if it did not see any benefits from it. He also alleged that Iran has sponsored terrorism in both Europe and the Middle East, while also backing proxy militias such as the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite armed groups in Iraq.

Coats' remarks on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, were also glaringly out of sync with some of Trump's claims about the status of the terrorist group.

Late last year, Trump announced that he was going to pull U.S. troops from Syria because the U.S. had "won against ISIS" and that "we have beaten them and we have beaten them badly."

The president and some in his administration have since said that the troop withdrawal process won't be immediate, but they've continued to insist that the group has been defeated on the ground.

Critics, while acknowledging the Islamic State's near-total territorial losses, warn that the group still lives as an insurgent force, and that withdrawing American troops will give them a vacuum to regain land.

Coats appeared to agree with those critics. He told senators that the Islamic State "very likely will continue to pursue external attacks from Iraq and Syria against regional and Western adversaries, including the United States."

"ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria," Coats said, adding that the terror group "will seek to exploit Sunni grievances, societal instability, and stretched security forces to regain territory in Iraq and Syria in the long term."

Separately on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that he would propose legislation that acknowledges "the plain fact that Al Qaeda, ISIS, and their affiliates in Syria and Afghanistan continue to pose a serious threat to our nation" and which would "recognize the danger of a precipitous withdrawal from either conflict."

Coats' comments on Tuesday aren't entirely surprising given publicly available information and analyses by non-government organizations about the status of the situation everywhere from North Korea to Syria. But his dissonance with Trump could, nonetheless, annoy the president, who has at times dismissed the intelligence community's assessments, including its conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

On North Korea, a country some view as the gravest external threat to the United States, Coats had some good news that echoed some of Trump's public comments.

Coats pointed out that Kim's regime has "halted some provocative behavior" related to its nuclear program and that the country has not conducted any nuclear tests in more than a year. He also said Kim "continues to demonstrate openness" to denuclearizing the area.

Still, he said assessments show that some of North Korea's activity is "inconsistent with full denuclearization."

He also said North Korea is trying to mitigate the effects of U.S. sanctions through diplomatic engagement with other parties. That is likely a reference to China and Russia, which have expressed discomfort with America's sanctions on Pyongyang.

When asked about the current state of the threat from North Korea by California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris, who is running for president, Haspel warned that Pyongyang is still developing a long-range missile.

"The regime is committed to developing a long-range nuclear armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States," Haspel said.

Trump, who held a summit with Kim in Singapore last June, insists that his one-on-one approach has improved the relationship between the two countries and will ultimately lead to de-nuclearization. At one point, Trump said that he and Kim "fell in love" and can work well together.