Fact-Checking Trump’s Claims About Iran
Fact-Checking Trump’s Claims About Iran
A speech by the president last week featured many inaccuracies.
Last week President Donald Trump delivered an address on the Iran war to the American people. In only 19 minutes, he presented Americans with at least eight fabrications. Since I’ve been hearing war-supporting commentators repeating those false claims this week, I’ve decided to provide a helpful dissection of them below.
#1. Operation Epic Fury targeted “the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”
Trump has frequently repeated this misleading claim before, most recently in his February 28 video making his case for his war on Iran.
Trump made this claim in his speech without evidence and in contradiction of the intelligence provided to him. The 2024 Global Terrorism Index states that the “deadliest terrorist groups in the world… were Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates, followed by Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), Hamas, and al-Shabaab.” None of these groups is Shiite, and none, with the exception of Hamas, is affiliated with Iran. The U.S. has long known that many of these organizations are supported by Saudi Arabia. Iran has sided with the U.S. against some of these groups and has itself been the victim of attacks by them.
#2. Iran is responsible for “countless heinous acts.”
Trump recited a list of Iranian attacks on U.S. interests, as he had done in his 2017 speech decertifying the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear deal and in his February video. Not one item on the list is accurate.
Trump says that Iran’s “proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut.” Amputated from its context, the claim is true; reattached to its context, it is critically misleading. The 1983 Hezbollah bombing was an attack on a military base in Beirut belonging to a foreign invader that was actively and currently bombing Lebanon. The bombing is plausibly seen more as an act of war than as a heinous act of terrorism.
Next on the list is Iran’s “slaughter of hundreds of our service members with roadside bombs.” Again, the roadside bombs killed service members in war. But the claim is false. As Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and director of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco, has explained, the vast majority of the improvised explosive devices Trump is referring to were manufactured and used not by Iran, as then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Peter Pace and the British and Iraqi governments have admitted, but by Iraqi guerillas, most of whom were Ba’athist, and by Sunni groups who were anti-Iranian.
Third on Trump’s list is that Iran was “involved in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.” The U.S. knows that it was not Iran, but Al Qaeda, that attacked the U.S.S. Cole. Not only did Al Qaeda claim responsibility for the attack, but the official FBI website says, “The extensive FBI investigation ultimately determined that members of the al Qaeda terrorist network planned and carried out the bombing.”
#3. “Obama gave [Iran] $1.7 billion in cash…. in an attempt to buy their respect and loyalty.”
The $1.7 billion figure was not an attempt to buy respect from Iran. At the time of the Barack Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran, the U.S. and Iran were in an arbitration case over the amount of interest owed on money Iran had placed in a U.S. trust fund. The $1.7 billion comprised the original amount and the interest owed.
Other money that Iran received was simply Iranian assets frozen by sanctions that were released when the sanctions were lifted after Iran’s compliance with its obligations was verified.
#4. Iran “continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons.”
Iran was not pursuing a nuclear bomb prior to the U.S. bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities last June in Operation Midnight Hammer. The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review concluded that “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.” That assessment was repeated in the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, which “reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community.” That document clearly states that U.S. intelligence “continue[s] to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
And Iran wasn’t pursuing a nuclear bomb even after Midnight Hammer and prior to the U.S. bombing Iran in Operation Epic Fury. On March 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee that since the June bombings, “there has been no efforts [sic]… to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.” Two weeks earlier, on March 3, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi verified that the IAEA has found “no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.”
Trump’s additional comment that Iran was “rac[ing] for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon—a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before” is laughable coming from the president of the only country to have dropped a nuclear bomb. And the world has seen nine countries race for a nuclear bomb.
#5. Iran “would soon have had missiles that could reach the American homeland.”
Iran does not possess intercontinental ballistic missiles that have a range capable of reaching the United States, nor does U.S. intelligence assess that they have made the decision to pursue development of them.
A May 2025 report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency stated that “Iran has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a militarily-viable ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] by 2035 should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.” That’s nine years away, and that’s if they decide to pursue the required technology.
In her March 18 testimony, Gabbard said only that Iran “could… begin to develop a militarily viable ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] before 2035, should Tehran attempt to pursue the capability.”
#6. Iran’s “missiles are just about used up or beaten.”
It is impossible to know how many missiles Iran had in its arsenal when the current war began or how many are left. U.S. intelligence estimates that only “about a third of Iran’s vast missile arsenal” has been destroyed. Iran says the U.S. “know[s] nothing about our vast and strategic capabilities.” What is known is that Iran maintains the capacity to fire missiles and drones and to hit their targets.
#7. The U.S. has “crush[ed] their ability to support terrorist proxies.”
Iran’s forward deterrent network of proxies and partners has not been crushed. It has proven far more resilient than the U.S. believed. Hezbollah has launched sophisticated missiles that the U.S. believed they no longer possessed at a rate that may be greater than they have ever launched before. Iraqi militias are launching drone strikes on U.S. bases in the region. The Yemeni Houthis have entered the war, launching several barrages of missiles. As Trump was addressing the nation, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Iran carried out coordinated missile strikes. Far from “crushed,” these strikes may represent an unexpected resilience and a deepening of military cooperation.
#8. “Regime change has occurred.”
Trump claimed that “regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change.” That’s not true. Trump told Iranians to “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!” He also said it was “time to look for new leadership in Iran.” On Truth Social he’s used the phrase in reference to Iran.
In any case, regime change hasn’t occurred in Iran. The people of Iran have not taken to the streets, and the government has not come close to falling. Following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime underwent a seamless transition to his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. Mojtaba Khamenei is a hardliner who was a close advisor to his father. He has been a core part of the regime, and his selection represents a preservation of, and not a change from, the regime.
Other new leaders, including Ali Larijani’s replacement as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps who has served in government since the days of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also represent regime continuity and survival.
Despite Trump’s insistence that the new leaders are “less radical and much more reasonable,” they seem instead to be more hardline than the figures they replaced.
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