{"id":5366,"date":"2026-07-09T19:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5366"},"modified":"2026-07-09T19:37:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T19:37:22","slug":"trump-now-claims-iran-has-already-been-denuclearized-so-what-was-the-point-of-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5366","title":{"rendered":"Trump now claims Iran has already been denuclearized. So what was the point of the war?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>\n            When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran in February, he cited its supposedly imminent nuclear threat. But there was always a problem with that: He\u2019d spent eight months asserting the program had already been \u201cobliterated\u201d last year.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5364\">Aviation pioneer Wally Funk, who trained as an early female astronaut, dies at 87<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            Just two weeks before the war began, in fact, Trump claimed US and Israeli strikes in June 2025 had left Iran without even a \u201cpotential capability\u201d for nukes.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n            Now, as Trump looks to extract himself from the highly unpopular war, he\u2019s offering more confounding signals about the state of Iran\u2019s nuclear threat.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            After more than four months of war and major costs to the US and world economy \u2014 all geared towards the still-unfulfilled goals of obtaining Iran\u2019s nuclear materials and a deal that keeps Tehran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon \u2014 Trump is suddenly suggesting none of that is even necessary.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            He\u2019s claiming the war is already a success because Iran has <em>already been denuclearized<\/em>.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            It seems Iran\u2019s nuclear program has magically gone back to \u201cobliterated\u201d status \u2014 at precisely the moment it looks like Trump\u2019s efforts to cut a deal are truly falling apart.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Trump made this argument repeatedly on Wednesday at a NATO summit in Turkey.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            When asked whether the war had hit a \u201cstrategic dead end,\u201d Trump assured that it hadn\u2019t because it was already a success.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cI was there for one reason: that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I call it, we denuclearize Iran,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s happened; they will never have a nuclear weapon.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The president said Iran\u2019s nuclear materials are now \u201cso far down under a mountain\u201d that they\u2019re virtually unobtainable. He also cited US monitoring capabilities, arguing officials can see the nuclear sites on cameras and ensure nobody can access them.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cThere\u2019s no way they have a nuclear weapon,\u201d Trump added.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            At a separate event, he was pressed on how he was going to get Iran\u2019s nuclear materials. He claimed that the United States, in effect, already has them.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cWe\u2019ve already got the nuclear material, because it\u2019s so far underground,\u201d Trump said. \u201cNobody\u2019s going to be able to get it except us.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            He added: \u201cThey can\u2019t get it.\u201d\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            \u201cI think it\u2019s a tremendous success,\u201d Trump said in the first appearance.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            A couple points.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            First, this is merely the latest evidence that Trump is laying the groundwork for possibly throwing in the towel in Iran without achieving his major objectives.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            The administration has repeatedly cast getting Iran\u2019s nuclear materials as a must-have \u2014 a \u201cred line,\u201d in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just six weeks ago.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5356\">Man accused of shooting two National Guard members hospitalized after refusing to eat in prison<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n            But Trump has also conspicuously floated the idea that this might not be strictly necessary, because the materials are inaccessible to Iran and the areas can be monitored from space.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Perhaps the bigger point, though, is that the comments raise more major questions about the original stated justifications for the war \u2014 and whether the war was launched (and continued) under false pretenses.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Trump\u2019s justifications were already a mess from the war\u2019s earliest days, and not just because of the \u201cobliterated\u201d talk. The administration has also issued a constantly shifting set of four goals. And Trump\u2019s initial threats to go to war back in January were focused not on the supposed nuclear threat but instead on regime change \u2014 a goal that he\u2019s also nonsensically claimed he has already achieved by killing certain leaders, despite that not matching what actually constitutes regime change.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But Trump\u2019s latest claims that Iran has suddenly been denuclearized forevermore is really difficult to square.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            It\u2019s certainly possible that strikes during this war have made the nuclear materials even more difficult to get to.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But by far the biggest strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear sites came back in June 2025, when Trump first claimed its nuclear program had been \u201cobliterated.\u201d And the major military actions in this war ended three months ago, when the first ceasefire was announced on April 7.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            If Iran\u2019s nuclear materials are now so buried that its program is basically done-for and a deal isn\u2019t necessary, why wasn\u2019t that the case three months ago? Why did the administration spend all this time pursuing a nuclear deal and say it still needed to get the materials? Why not just keep hitting the nuclear sites to further bury the materials, if that\u2019s good enough?\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            It makes no sense.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            It all points to a far less justifiable possibility for why Trump is making these arguments now: that he has lost patience with this war and recognizes a good deal is probably not going to happen. (Iran certainly doesn\u2019t seem interested in cutting one, judging by its many apparent violations of the ceasefire.) So it\u2019s best to start spinning why he\u2019s getting out with so many of his goals unfulfilled.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            But also consider where that would leave the war effort. It wouldn\u2019t just be that Trump wouldn\u2019t accomplish his goals; it would mean that the war came with some major costs for virtually no gain.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            Besides the 13 lives of US service members lost in the conflict, at the top of that list would be the economic shock of the past few months and Iran\u2019s now-demonstrated ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. The latter especially looms extremely large over the future of the Middle East and the world right now.\n    <\/p>\n<p>\n            And judging by Trump\u2019s most recent comments, it\u2019s looking more and more like that might be the most significant result of this war.\n    <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5354\">Inside the insurgent rise and rapid downfall of Graham Platner\u2019s campaign<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran, he cited its supposedly imminent nuclear threat. But he\u2019d spent months asserting the program had already been \u201cobliterated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trump now claims Iran has already been denuclearized. So what was the point of the war? - Relocation Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=5366\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump now claims Iran has already been denuclearized. So what was the point of the war? - Relocation Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran, he cited its supposedly imminent nuclear threat. 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