There is no evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon

In the past few days, Donald Trump suggested that allowing Iran to destroy Los Angeles or San Diego would be dandy. Then, to quiet those who quickly insisted that he was merely joking about the death of millions, he did it again.

“You want to see trauma? You want to see problems? And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. You want to see a horror show? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles,” Trump said, speaking at a campaign rally in San Antonio.

News outlets and pundits have been quick to rewrite Trump’s words to add a level of coherence, as in this beauty from FactCheck.org.

While his wording is confusing, a more plausible interpretation is that he meant the war would prevent Iran from posing a threat to U.S. cities, and higher gas prices are a small sacrifice to make.

Acting as a clean up crew for Trump is a full time occupation for many in the media. But FactCheck does, 21 paragraphs later, eventually mention the point that should be at the top of every media report: There is not, and never has been, any evidence that Iran posed a threat to American cities.

In March 2025, the annual assessment of the U. S. intelligence community made the truth clear.

We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 200...

Then National Security Advisor Tulsi Gabbard repeated this assessment in testimony before Congress. Iran was not close to building a nuclear weapon. Iran was not even trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Despite this assessment, just two months later, Trump directed U.S. forces to bomb Iranian sites, while saying Iran was “very close to having a nuclear weapon.“ He provided no evidence to support this claim.

Following this round of bombing, Trump declared that these attacks had "completely and fully obliterated" Iran's nuclear facilities. Then, in his State of the Union address seven months later, Trump again claimed that Iran represented an imminent threat and was in the process of building intercontinental ballistic missiles that would “soon reach the United States of America.”

Days later, Trump launched a war against Iran; a war that has so far cost the United States at least 21 service members killed, 865 wounded, 81 aircraft lost, 15 bases abandoned, and at least $44 billion in direct expenditures. In the process, the nation has used virtually its entire stockpile of precision strike missiles, half the supply of Tomahawk missiles, and 80% of the interceptors critical to defending U.S. personnel on the ground and at sea.

The payoff for this war is that the average American family has faced $1,200 in increased costs even as the nation, and its military has lost the respect of people around the world. And still, Trump has provided not a scrap of evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.

Seven months later, war is raging in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Ships are still sinking in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Red Sea. Missiles and drones have struck targets in 14 nations across the Middle East. The United States has betrayed every principle to beg Vladimir Putin for diesel fuel while pulling planes from bases in England out of fear.

It is hard to imagine a more clueless execution or disastrous result than Donald Trump's pointless, indefensible war on Iran.

Trump has continued to insist that the price paid was "small" compared to the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The White House has described the situation in Iran as an "imminent nuclear threat" while White House adviser Steve Witkoff said that Iran was “probably a week away" from having the material to make a bomb.

But they have still not provided one damn piece of evidence that any threat existed.

On the same day that Trump began his war, U.S. intelligence continued to make clear there was no threat.

According to two sources, the claim that Iran will soon have a missile capable of hitting the US is not backed up by intelligence — there is no intelligence to suggest that Iran is pursuing an ICBM program to hit the US at this time, the sources said.

The intelligence community also made clear that Iran was at least a decade away from having any form of missile that could reach targets in the United States. Los Angeles and San Diego were not about to be hit by Iranian nuclear weapons on Iranian ICBMs. Because both the weapons and the missiles are a complete fantasy.

The weapons were not being developed. The missiles were at least a decade away. Those are the facts.

When Trump makes any attempt to justify the war based on the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, or when partner-in-crime Benjamin Netanyahu stands before the United Nations and declares that, had the U.S. and Israel not attacked Iran earlier this year, "we’d all be dead," the issue is not how well they worded their statements.

The issue is that they are lying. Because there was no threat. Trump and Netanyahu attacked Iran because they wanted to. And for no other reason.

In March 2026, three weeks after Trump began this war, intelligence officials were back on Capitol Hill where Gabbard attempted to give Trump partial credit ... but still undercut every justification for the war.

“As a result of [the June bombing], Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.”

No weapon. No missiles. Not even any enriched uranium.

Rather than bending over backwards to help Trump make his case, why doesn't the media stick to this single point:

There has never been any evidence that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon.

And while they are at it, they might mention that Trump has signaled that, as soon as the midterms are past, he's going to go back to bombing Iran. Because his war is about politics, not security. Because he wants to. Because he’s a liar.