In Trump’s Case for War, a Series of False or Unproven Claims
Key elements of the Trump administration’s arguments this week for another military campaign against Iran do not hold up.
nytimes.com/…us/politics/trump-iran-claims- …
As they made their public case this week for another American military campaign against Iran, President Trump and his aides asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear program, has enough available nuclear material to build a bomb within days, and is developing long-range missiles that will soon be capable of hitting the United States.
All three of these claims are either false or unproven.
American and European government officials, international weapons monitoring groups and reports from American intelligence agencies give a far different picture of the urgency of the Iran threat than the one the White House has presented in recent days.
Iran has taken steps to dig out the nuclear facilities hit during strikes last June by Israel and the United States, and it has resumed work at some sites long known to American spy agencies. But the officials said that there isn’t evidence that Iran has made active efforts to resume enriching uranium or trying to build a mechanism to detonate a bomb.
The stockpiles of uranium that Iran has already enriched remain buried after last year’s strikes, making it nearly impossible for Iran to build a bomb “within days.”
Iran has a large arsenal of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel and American military bases in the Middle East, but American intelligence agencies believe Iran is probably years away from having missiles that can hit the United States.
The Pentagon for weeks has been moving ships, planes and air defense units to the Middle East as part of the largest American military buildup in the region in more than two decades. This escalation, along with Mr. Trump’s threats, has brought criticism that the White House has made no public case to justify a second American military conflict in Iran in less than a year.
Now, top Trump administration officials have begun to make the case, and key elements of their arguments do not hold up under close scrutiny. They have even contradicted each other in their public statements.
Mr. Trump’s statements about the urgency of the threat posed by Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address this week had echoes of 2003, when President George W. Bush used the State of the Union to build a case for war in Iraq. During that speech, he asserted that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to fuel a nascent nuclear weapons program. That claim, like so many other Bush administration assertions about Iraq’s weapons programs, was later proved to be false.
“I’m very concerned,” Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday after a closed-door meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Wars in the Middle East don’t go well for presidents, for the country, and we have not heard articulated a single good reason for why now is the moment to launch yet another war in the Middle East.”
odies, Bodies
Ballistic Missiles
Image
An Iranian ballistic missile was carried past a portrait of Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Quds force who was assassinated in a U.S. strike, during a military parade in 2024.Credit...Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto, via Reuters
Iran is believed to have some 2,000 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. Experts said that the country appears to have largely replenished this arsenal since firing hundreds of missiles at Israel — and more than a dozen at a U.S. military base in Qatar — last June.
Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.
Iran has steadily increased the range of its ballistic missiles, and its most powerful missiles can hit Central and Eastern Europe.
But in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Trump made a new claim, saying Iran was “working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
The following day, Mr. Rubio repeated the president’s assertion about Iran’s work on intercontinental ballistic missiles, although he used different language about how quickly Iran could be capable of hitting the United States. While Mr. Trump said it would be “soon,” Mr. Rubio said it would be “one day.”
“You’ve seen them increasing the range of the missiles they have now, and clearly they are headed in the pathway to one day being able to develop weapons that could reach the continental U.S.,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
Three American officials with access to current intelligence about Iran’s missile programs said that Mr. Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat posed to the United States. One official said some intelligence analysts were concerned that top aides have inflated the threats or that intelligence was being selectively presented or distorted as it was sent upward.
A report by the Defense Intelligence Agency last year concluded that Iran did not have ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States, and that it might take as long as a decade for it to have up to 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Even to reach that number of missiles on that timetable, the intelligence agency found, Iran would need to make a determined push to develop that technology.
When asked on Wednesday about the Defense Intelligence Agency report, Mr. Rubio declined to comment.
Concern over Iranian missiles is hardly new for the U.S. government. As far back as 2010, a classified assessment released by WikiLeaks revealed that the U.S. government was secretly monitoring missile technology aid that North Korea was giving to Iran.
The missiles in question were medium-range, able to travel more than 2,000 miles, enough for Iran to hit parts of Europe. Iran obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, according to a diplomatic cable dated Feb. 24, 2010. At the time, American officials warned that the advanced propulsion could speed Iran’s development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But 16 years later, there is still no evidence that Iran has made its long-range missile program a top priority.
Instead, Iran has put far greater focus on building up its arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles, believing it could be the most effective deterrent against Israeli or American efforts to overthrow the government in Tehran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has authorized government officials to negotiate with the United States over the country’s nuclear program. The missile program, he insists, is not negotiable.
Iran’s Nuclear Program
Image
Steve Witkoff, one of President Trump’s top negotiators, arriving at his hotel during a new round of talks between the United States and Iran on Thursday.Credit...Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Steve Witkoff, the White House’s lead negotiator in those discussions with the Iranians, said on Fox News on Saturday that Iran is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb making material.”
But American officials and international weapons inspectors said that was not the case, largely because the U.S. and Israeli strikes last June badly damaged Iran’s three main nuclear sites, Natanz, Fordo and Isfahan.
Those attacks made it far more difficult for Iran to access the near-bomb-grade fuel it would need to produce a nuclear weapon quickly. Even if it were to dig it out, experts said, it would take many months — perhaps more than a year — to turn it into a warhead.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, most of the nearly 1,000 pounds of Iran’s 60 percent enriched uranium is buried at Isfahan. There is little evidence that the Iranians are digging out the deep-underground containers in which the uranium is stored.
And without that stockpile, which would have to be further enriched to 90 percent purity before it could be fabricated into a bomb, it is nearly impossible for the Iranian military to produce a weapon.
Even some of Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress have seemed to question Mr. Witkoff’s assertion that Iran could build a bomb so quickly.
“I can’t speak for Steve. I haven’t got those reports, and I’ve been read in on some of those programs,” Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said on CNN this week. “I’m not saying he’s wrong or he’s right, I just haven’t seen those reports.”
Mr. Rubio acknowledged on Wednesday that there was no evidence the Iranians were currently enriching nuclear fuel.
In his State of the Union speech, Mr. Trump reiterated his claim that the strikes last June completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program — “we wiped it out,” he said — but asserted that Iran had restarted the program.
“They want to start it all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,” he said.
American officials who have been briefed on U.S. intelligence assessments said that Iran has not built any new nuclear sites since last June. In recent months, however, Iranian activity has been detected at two still-incomplete nuclear sites that were not struck in last year’s war.
One is near Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site, which both Israel and the United States struck. Another is near Isfahan, where most of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium is now buried after the June attack.
Iranian engineers also appear to be exploring how to burrow further underground. U.S. intelligence reports have indicated that Iran could be excavating as a way to build new facilities that would be out of the reach of the most powerful conventional U.S. weapon, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which the Pentagon used last June against the Fordo nuclear site.
The Fordo facility remains inoperable, according to American officials.
Eric Schmitt, William J. Broad and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.
Mark Mazzetti is an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. He has written a book about the C.I.A.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
See more on: Donald Trump, U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency

An unconventional strategy leads to criticism
Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote on social media that “after Trump launched a new war on Iran, he did not rush back to the White House to make an Oval Office address to rally the nation as other presidents have done. He stayed at Mar-a-Lago to attend a glitzy political fundraiser.”
That post provoked a response from Steven Cheung, White House communications director. “Imagine being a reporter so consumed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that he wants President Trump to mimic the failed policies of the past. The truth is that President Trump spent the majority of his time monitoring the situation in a secure facility, in constant contact with world leaders, and made multiple addresses to the nation that garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also took dozens of calls with reporters.”
The calls included one with Baker's colleague at The Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Trump's mobile phone number is known to many of the reporters who cover him, and the president often takes their calls for on-the-spot interviews. Besides The Times, he spoke in the aftermath of the attack to journalists for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Axios, Politico and an Israeli television station.
Most of the calls were brief and marginally illuminating; Politico's Dasha Burns said Trump answered but said he was too busy to talk. The public couldn't hear what Trump said in the interviews and was dependent upon what the journalists chose to report on the conversations.
“I spoke to President Trump today and he told me that the operation in Iran is going to go very fast,” Libby Alon, a reporter for Channel 14 News in Israel, wrote about her interview on X. “It’s doing very well, and (will) make the people of Israel very happy, and the people of the world very happy.”
The Times reported that in its six-minute chat, Trump “offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.”
In one of his two conversations with Trump, ABC News' Jonathan Karl said when he asked about the death of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the president said: “I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well I got him first.” CNN's Jake Tapper went on the air minutes after his conversation Monday, saying Trump told him “the big one is coming soon,” an apparent reference to a future attack.
Asked for comment, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump is the most transparent and accessible president in American history. The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a president of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
Hegseth briefing concentrates on friendly reporters
Pentagon reporters learned late Sunday about Hegseth's briefing. Reporters from The Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and Stars & Stripes were permitted into the briefing room, but Hegseth did not call on them. Instead, he took questions from NewsNation and Trump-friendly outlets like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, One America News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Most mainstream news outlets left their regular stations at the Pentagon last fall rather than agree to Hegseth's rules restricting their work.
Hegseth denounced the “foolishness” of people wanting to know details of the operation in advance, such as whether Americans would commit to more than air power, and said the operation would continue as long as it took to achieve objections. He initially ignored NBC News' Courtney Kube when she called out a question: “President Trump put a four-week time limit on it. Are you saying he's wrong?”
Later, Hegseth denounced Kube for asking “the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it might take — four weeks, two weeks, six weeks, it could move up, it could move back. We're going to execute at his command the objectives he set out to achieve."
Unlike Pentagon briefings in past administrations, reporters were given assigned seats, with the Trump-friendly outlets seated in front. Jennifer Griffin, Hegseth's former colleague at Fox News Channel who left the Pentagon with other reporters after not accepting his new rules, was seated in the last row.
___
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at twitter.com/dbauder and David Bauder (@dbauder.bsky.social).
View comments (7.4k)