President Donald Trump has said a lot of things about the three Iranian nuclear facilities the US attacked last year. Until Thursday night, he had never publicly claimed these facilities were also “drug factories.”
Trump’s comments at a rally in Oklahoma bewildered not only average Americans but also experts on Iran’s nuclear program.
“Wow…That one is new to me,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a Friday email after CNN sent him a video of Trump’s remarks. “To my knowledge, the Fordow facility, whose destruction Trump is describing, was not being used for drug production and neither had I previously heard any allegation (credible or otherwise) that it was.”
The White House refused to offer any explanation for Trump’s comments when CNN inquired on Friday. But if you watch the full video of Trump’s speech, an obvious theory quickly emerges.
It appears likely that he made a simple mistake, and then – as he has for years – doubled down instead of correcting himself. For a president who has declared himself “right about everything,” even an admission of minor verbal error is usually a bridge too far.
Trump’s claim came after remarks about drugs in the Caribbean
Trump made the claim about “drug factories” near the end of a long day. He had traveled from the White House to an event in Texas, then arrived about two hours late for the rally in Oklahoma after bad weather forced him to drive rather than fly.
While discussing his efforts to combat Iran, Trump spoke of the stealth bombers that attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in the June 2025 operation codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer.” Some of the planes dropped bombs aimed at Fordow’s ventilation shafts.
Trump said, “And then at 1 o’clock in the morning with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded; every single bomb went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. That’s what they were doing – they were nuclear and drug. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. But these drug factories-slash-nuclear factories were hit so hard.”
Why did Trump say this? We might never know for sure. But just before he started talking about Iran, he had been talking about his attempts to thwart illegal drug trafficking in the Caribbean and about the US military operation that captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Trump’s initial remark about bombs hitting Iranian “uh, drug factories, really” seemed likely to be a slip triggered by the preceding remarks about illegal drugs and Venezuela.
Trump has long refused to acknowledge even insignificant speaking stumbles, instead preferring to act as if he had really meant to say the mistaken thing he said – even something as insignificant as whether a federal agent he praised in a 2018 address is nicknamed “CJ” or “DJ.” Here, instead of just amending the “drug factories” assertion, he ad-libbed three additional lines reiterating the assertion.
The White House wouldn’t try to explain
The White House, which tends to declare that “President Trump is right” even in response to questions about some of Trump’s most inaccurate remarks, wouldn’t offer a defense of this one. “Refer to POTUS’ comments,” an aide said in an unsigned Friday email.
Acton, trying to think of a “possible explanation,” said it’s possible Trump remembered how Iran has sometimes pointed out that legal drugs known as “radiopharmaceuticals,” which are used to diagnose and treat certain medical conditions, “are produced in nuclear reactors.”
But Acton then noted that the Fordow facility Trump very much seemed to be talking about Thursday is an enrichment center with no reactor, “so, even under this (generous) interpretation, Trump’s statement would be inaccurate.” He said it’s more plausible Trump simply made a mistake.
And, of course, it would be highly misleading for Trump to go from talking about the trafficking of illegal drugs in the Caribbean to talking about Iran operating “drug factories” in its nuclear facilities without ever explaining he was now referring to the production of lawful drugs.
So Trump having merely slipped up is actually the kindest possible defense of his “drug factories” remarks. Not that Trump or his team are willing to use it.
