Trump White House Considers Dropping Nukes on Iran

The Trump administration is reportedly considering nuking Iran.

The Guardian on Wednesday claimed that the U.S. military has reservations regarding the success of using a bunker-buster bomb, a nonnuclear weapon, to eliminate Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, buried deep in a mountain. Two defense officials were reportedly briefed that only a tactical nuclear weapon could reach the facility, but The Guardian noted that Trump is not considering using a tactical nuke.

On Thursday, Fox News senior White House correspondent Jaqui Heinrich reported that the White House told her otherwise.

“I was just told by a top official here that none of that report is true, that none of the options are off the table, and the U.S. military is very confident that bunker busters could get the job done at Fordo,” Heinrich said.

After days of bombings and further escalation from Israel and the U.S., Trump is now openly floating nuking a country of 90 million to stop it from building the nukes the West has claimed it’s been building for decades. This disgusting provocation would leave countless innocents dead, poison the region for decades, and almost certainly lead to even deeper international conflict. All this from a president who ran on a promise to end endless wars and bring peace to the Middle East.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wouldn’t “engage in hypotheticals” when asked two major questions on Trump’s plans for Iran.

First, she was asked whether Trump would circumvent Congress to strike Iran.

“[If] the U.S. were to take some type of military action, would the president go to Congress to seek war authority?” a reporter asked Leavitt at her Thursday press conference, referring to the power afforded to Congress by the Constitution.

“I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals. I gave you the statement from the president, he’ll make a decision in two weeks,” she responded.

Leavitt referred to another valid question as a worthless hypothetical again a minute later, when asked about Iran potentially retaliating with an attempt on the president’s life, as it has been accused of doing in the past.

“As for your question regarding Iranian retaliation, I’m not gonna engage in hypotheticals again. But I can assure the American public and the world that this administration is prepared and ready to defend American interests and assets, not just in the region but here on our homeland as well,” she said.

The Trump administration has already been supporting Israeli intelligence and helped them shoot Iranian missiles down. The United States is already at least tangentially involved, while seeming to inch closer to full participation by the day. These “hypotheticals” that Leavitt shirks are being asked because they appear to be extremely likely outcomes, not just some random scenario that reporters are trying to sensationalize. It’s deeply troubling that the press secretary is dodging questions about whether the president will respect congressional war powers or launch us into another one of Israel’s wars, leaving a massive door open for Trump to avoid future accountability.

The world is on edge waiting for Donald Trump to decide if he will order the U.S. military to attack Iran. And according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, everyone will have to wait a little longer—two weeks, to be exact.

Leavitt revealed Trump’s decision-making timeline during a press briefing at the White House Thursday.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Leavitt said, reading out a statement from Trump.

A reporter then pointed out that Trump often sets two-week deadlines only to move them to suit his needs, as he has done while tepidly trying to convince Russia to stop its war in Ukraine.

“How can we be sure that he’s going to stick to this one on making the decision on Iran?” asked AFP’s Danny Kemp, referring to a similar two-week deadline Trump has repeatedly given Russia to stop bombing Ukraine (with no tangible results).

Leavitt stammered as she claimed that Iran negotiations and Russia-Ukraine negotiations were completely different before pivoting to a tried-and-true fallback: blaming Joe Biden.

Trump has previously claimed that Iranian officials want to come to Washington and negotiate an end to Israel’s war, which has so far killed at least 639 people in Iran, according to human rights groups.

Tehran, for its part, has said that “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”

“The only thing more despicable than [Trump’s] lies is his cowardly threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader,” the Iranian mission to the U.N. wrote on X Wednesday.

Either way, making a people under attack wait two weeks to see if they will face further bombardment is a bonkers decision. It also marks a significant change in tone for Trump, who has so far indicated he is open to attacking Iran and has repeatedly demanded “unconditional surrender” from the Middle Eastern nation. But maybe he’s content to sit back and let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do all the dirty work.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security have claimed multiple times since May that there’s been a 413 percent increase in assaults against their agents to justify their officers wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves. The data states otherwise. 

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump penned a column asserting the obvious—ICE officers are covering their faces and wearing plainclothes while they kidnap people off the street to “avoid accountability” and make it “harder to say precisely who had plucked up a college student or local mother and sent them to jail in another state.”  

Bump first raised the question in May in an article that had acting ICE Director Todd Lyons so incensed that he wrote a letter to the editor claiming a staggering increase in assaults, writing “officers wear masks for personal protection and to prevent doxing.… Since President Donald Trump returned to office, ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.”

The use of a percentage here is very intentional, as it’s easier to inflate and sensationalize. “A 413 percent increase could mean that the number of assaults went from 200 in 2024 to 1,026 in 2025—or that it went from eight to 41.… There’s a big difference between an increase of 826 assaults and an increase of 33—especially if some of those ‘assaults’ are of the Lander variety,” wrote Bump, who dug into the claim in a piece published Thursday.

Bump found that assaults on agents had decreased every month since 2024 and, despite repeated requests to ICE, wasn’t given any proof of ICE agents being doxxed, targeted, or assaulted outside the context of an immigration arrest. 

The organization that has conducted countless raids and crackdowns, kidnapped innocent people off the street, and handcuffed elected officials, is now trying to frame itself as the victim so that its officers can continue to feel big and strong behind the anonymity of their masks. 

“We should not and cannot take ICE’s representations about the need for its officers to obscure their identities at face value. That the organization would not provide evidence for its claims … diminishes the extent to which we should grant ICE the benefit of the doubt,” Bump wrote. “Leaving the question I posed in May: Why are these officers covering their faces if not to avoid accountability?”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Pentagon to tone any commemoration of Juneteenth way, way down, in keeping with his anti-diversity crusade.

Hegseth’s office requested the Department of Defense take “a passive approach to Juneteenth messaging,” according to an email obtained by Rolling Stone. The Pentagon’s office of the chief of public affairs also said in the email it won’t publish Juneteenth-related material online on Thursday.

Juneteenth marks the official last day of slavery in the United States. After the Civil War ended, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to free the last enslaved people in the country. President Joe Biden signed a law making Juneteenth a federal holiday in 2021. The bill passed with widespread bipartisan support in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate.

The White House did not respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment about Hegseth’s directive. A Pentagon official said the DOD “may engage in the following activities, subject to applicable department guidance: holiday celebrations that build camaraderie and esprit de corps; outreach events (e.g., recruiting engagements with all-male, all-female, or minority-serving academic institutions) where doing so directly supports DOD’s mission; and recognition of historical events and notable figures where such recognition informs strategic thinking, reinforces our unity, and promotes meritocracy and accountability.”

It’s a little surprising that Hegseth didn’t choose to do away with marking Juneteenth altogether. Since being sworn in, the defense secretary has repeatedly stated that “DEI is dead” at the Pentagon.

Hegseth has banned the DOD from marking identity months such as Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and Pride Month. In February, the Pentagon was directed to scrub its website of all “news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The DOD removed web pages about the Tuskegee Airmen, the World War II accomplishments of Jackie Robinson, and the Navajo Code Talkers, among others—although these were restored after widespread scrutiny.

Hegseth has also insisted on changing the names of military bases that were once named after Confederate figures. The bases were renamed following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and Hegseth is now working to revert the base names back to the pro-slavery ones.