Lawmakers and Pundits Speed Run Iraq WMDs-Level Lies About Iran

The US intelligence consensus is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Why does our media and political class keep implying—and explicitly saying—otherwise?

Early Sunday morning Iranian time, the United States directly entered Israel’s war on Iran by bombing what President Trump said were three “nuclear facilities.” While the full scope and death toll of the attack are not yet clear, what is apparent is that direct US attacks with 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs and cruise missiles mark the opening of a direct war with the potential to unleash widespread death and destruction in Iran, and lead to a wider regional—or even world—war.

The minutes and hours following this attack, just like the moments leading up to it, are vital for any effort to stop the war before it is in full swing. But during this critical time, well-placed lawmakers and pundits who are supposedly critics of the Trump administration instead used their platforms to circulate a pernicious lie that is on par with the “weapons of mass destruction” falsehoods about Iraq the administration of George W. Bush purveyed 22 years ago: that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.

Live on CNN, Jake Tapper asked Anderson Cooper, “Even though President Trump did describe the strikes on the three sites—Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan—as having been completely and totally obliterated, really it's a question of how accurate that is. Is there any of this weapons program left at all?”

But Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, according to the US government’s own intelligence. The annual threat assessment published in March 2025 by the Director of National Intelligence says, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei] has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

And intelligence assessments leaked to CNN and the Wall Street Journal also find that there is no nuclear weapons program. According to CNN, US intelligence consensus is “not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing, according to four people familiar with the assessment.”

And if one has any doubt, the New York Times reported Thursday that the Trump White House was not acting on any new intelligence, but simply providing a “new analysis of existing work,” which is to say they are completely ignoring the US intelligence consensus and coming to a conclusion they want to sell a war. “None of the new assessments on the timeline to get a bomb are based on newly collected intelligence, according to multiple officials,” the Times’ Julian E. Barnes reported.

If Tapper has information about an active Iranian nuclear weapons program, he is breaking major news and should probably frame it as such. But of course, he does not, and is merely repeating a key piece of fear mongering used to justify a catastrophic war—and not for the first time. On June 13, Tapper also referred to the “Iranian nuclear weapons program” live on air, again completely contradicting the whole of US intelligence consensus.

But there is another rhetorical sleight of hand being widely used: outlets and lawmakers are referring to Iran’s “nuclear program,” but framing it in such a way that it sounds vaguely weapon-y and scary. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement that said "President Trump took action against Iran tonight in what appears to be a limited contained strike. We are still waiting to understand the extent to which that action has deterred Iran's nuclear threat. The United States must not rush into war with Iran.”

But what “nuclear threat” is being referenced here? Does Senator Sheehan believe that Iran should not be allowed to have a civilian nuclear energy program? If she is claiming Iran has a nuclear weapons program, what is her evidence? Is it a “threat” if a country, according to US intelligence, is “not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon,” and if it decided to do so would be “up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one to a target of its choosing”? Of course, calls for the United States not to rush into war are good, but a key part of deescalation is dispelling key myths used to justify Trump’s war of aggression—something Democrats repeatedly refuse to do.

Indeed, Rep Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) went on cable news and repeated this lie when trying to promote diplomacy. While calling for Trump to “get back to the bargaining table” on CNN Wednesday, Krishnamoorthi told anchor Sara Sidner, “Let's make sure that we end this nuclear weapons program once and for all.” CNN also allowed H. R. McMaster to claim, live on air this past Friday, that Iran “restarted” their “nuclear weapons program” in 2018. Both claims are false, both claims are casually aired to millions of Americans.

False claims or insinuations about Iran having nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program are not a simple slip of the tongue or semantics: They are being used by both Israel and the United States to argue that a catastrophic war is both urgent and necessary. It’s a scare phrase used by everyone from Vice President J.D. Vance on Meet the Press to Democrat-turned-Trump-champion John Fetterman to the President of the United States. “Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” the president declared in a press conference following the bombing. Israeli and White House officials—as well major Democratic leaders—repeatedly making references to “nuclear threats,” “nuclear sites,” “and nuclear weapons programs” gives the public the impression that Iran has nuclear weapons, and the attacks are aimed at eradicating an active threat. Even if they don’t use the exact term “active nuclear weapons program,” the effect of this rhetorical sleight-of-hand is clear. The bombing was an “incredible and overwhelming success that devastated Iran's nuclear program,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth proclaimed this morning, in a statement clearly referencing an active threat.

There is an urgent push to try to stop a war. Emergency protests across the country have already been called, and anti-war lobbyists and some lawmakers are sprinting to use a War Powers Resolution to slam the brakes on what the president is doing. This is the context in which these unhelpful and confusing statements about Iran’s nuclear program are being circulated, though, to be sure, not every major Democrat is complicit. Chris Murphy, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sanders, and a few dozen lawmakers are leading the charge to rein in Trump’s lawlessness, and doing so without reinforcing the false premises of the bipartisan war party.

In reality, this war is being waged by two nuclear weapons powers—the United States and Israel—against a country that does not have nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons program, according to the overwhelming consensus of the US intelligence community. The propaganda effort to suggest otherwise requires a constant conflation of a civilian nuclear program with the vague impression that Iranians are not only secretly working on a nuclear bomb, and not only days away from having one, but somehow going to use it against the United States and its allies. It’s a pervasive, deliberate distortion of truth that our media should be working to explain and correct and clarify for an understandably confused public—not, at best, permit this constant innuendo to be emanated without pushback or, at worst, explicitly advance the lie of an “Iranian nuclear weapons program” themselves.