Donald Trump's framing of the war in Iran is devoid of logic. He said both that “we totally obliterated [Iran’s] nuclear sites” last June and that by February, Iran was “right at the doorstep” not just of possessing a nuclear weapon but of having “a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before”. A nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before is presumably some kind of fantastically destructive new technology. What he is telling them is that Iran went from having no physical nuclear programme left at all to being on the cusp of deploying an unprecedented nuclear weapon. Trump’s claim that Iran was about to create a new kind of nuclear weapon is nothing like that.

Source: The Irish Times April 07, 2026 15:36 UTC