“That's why in a breakthrough operation last June, the United States military obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program with an attack on Iranian soil, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.”

Repeated framing across multiple venues including the February 24, 2026 SOTU

The Pentagon's own intelligence said otherwise. A preliminary classified report from the Defense Intelligence Agency found the June 22, 2025 bombing sealed off the entrances of two facilities and set back Iran's nuclear program by only a few months, as CNN and the New York Times reported. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi confirmed the sites suffered "severe damage but not total damage."

The most dangerous material was never accounted for. The IAEA reports that Iran had accumulated 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60% by the time of the June 2025 attacks, some of it stored in a tunnel complex at Isfahan where satellite imagery later showed regular vehicle activity. In March 2026 the IAEA said it had not had access to Iran's declared enriched uranium for more than eight months. An early U.S. intelligence assessment reported by the Associated Press found that at least some of the highly enriched uranium was moved out before the strikes and survived.

Trump's claim collapses under his own contradiction. To justify launching a second war on Iran in February 2026, Trump asserted Iran had "attempted to rebuild their nuclear program" and was "right at the doorstep" of a nuclear bomb, a threat that cannot exist if the program was "completely obliterated" eight months earlier. FactCheck.org documented that arms control experts found no evidence of rebuilding either, leaving both halves of Trump's story unsupported: the program was neither obliterated in 2025 nor resurgent in 2026. "Experts and a classified U.S. intelligence report said the sites were damaged and Iran's uranium enrichment program was set back, but the sites and the country's nuclear capabilities weren't completely destroyed." — FactCheck.org, April 2, 2026