{"id":424,"date":"2026-07-22T21:11:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T21:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2026-07-22T21:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T21:11:39","slug":"trump-and-hegseth-arent-telling-the-truth-about-why-were-at-war-with-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=424","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Hegseth aren\u2019t telling the truth about why we\u2019re at war with Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

On Tuesday afternoon, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testified to Congress about the war with Iran, which, after four months of fighting and a highly touted ceasefire, has since devolved into a series of tit-for-tat attacks. When Hegseth wasn\u2019t blaming former President Joe Biden for allegedly bequeathing him a toothless fighting force, he repeatedly claimed that the \u201coverarching objective\u201d of the Iran war is \u201censuring Iran never has a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more MAGA-fueled EEOC votes to end collection of corporate data on race and gender<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an assertion that administration officials have made since the day the war began, yet it doesn\u2019t appear to be remotely true \u2014 and Democrats need to be saying it more loudly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the U.S. doesn\u2019t want to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb \u2014 it\u2019s that the war the U.S. is actually waging has virtually nothing to do with Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

Indeed, from the earliest days of the war, U.S. military strikes have been focused primarily on Iran\u2019s leadership, its conventional military capabilities and its military-industrial base. Few if any of the attacks targeted Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Relying on U.S. classified assessments, Reuters reported in May that Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities are largely unchanged since last summer, when U.S. and Israeli planes attacked Iran\u2019s nuclear reactors and enrichment facilities. But Iran is still approximately a year away from building a bomb, according to three sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters.<\/p>\n

Any effort to restart the program was made more difficult by last June\u2019s U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure, which \u2014 lest we forget \u2014 President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted \u201cobliterated\u201d the country\u2019s nuclear program.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, recent press reports indicate that Israeli intelligence believes that last fall Iran \u201cmoved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain\u201d labeled Pickaxe Mountain. According to The Wall Street Journal, the installation \u201chasn\u2019t been targeted in the round of fighting with the U.S. that began on Feb. 28.\u201d<\/p>\n

These facts, however, have not stopped Trump and Hegseth from repeatedly lying about Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, they have claimed that Iran\u2019s leaders are actively seeking to restart its program. But that claim is contradicted not only by U.S. intelligence, but also \u2026 by Trump administration officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, before the war even began, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Iran was not enriching nuclear fuel. Going back even further, in May 2025, then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that \u201cIran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.\u201d In the run-up to war, Trump\u2019s lead negotiator, Steve Witkoff, said that Iran is \u201cprobably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb making material.\u201d It\u2019s an assertion that simply wasn\u2019t true.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As was the case more than 20 years ago with the Bush administration\u2019s ill-fated decision to go to war against Iraq, Trump administration officials have used the nuclear bogeyman as an excuse for war \u2014 and, like their predecessors, the have repeatedly misled the public about the nature of the threat.<\/p>\n

Read more Thanks to Trump\u2019s Iran war, the Pentagon is almost broke<\/a><\/p>\n

In fact, on Wednesday, Trump even claimed that the 18 American soldiers who have died in the war said \u201cvery strongly\u201d that \u201cwe cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon\u201d \u2014 thus completing the difficult task of both lying to Americans and disrespecting those killed in the war.<\/p>\n

What is perhaps most galling about Hegseth\u2019s comments on Tuesday is that he came to Congress, hat in hand, asking for close to $70 billion in taxpayer dollars to wage the Iran war while speaking of a potential threat \u2014 Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 that isn\u2019t even being addressed by the U.S. military right now.<\/p>\n

Since July 8, U.S. forces have hit Iran on a near-daily basis. However, according to daily press releases put out by U.S. Central Command, which runs U.S. military operations in the Middle East, the focus of U.S. attacks is to \u201cdegrade Iran\u2019s ability to continue attacking commercial vessels flowing through the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. military strikes have targeted Iranian air defenses, command-and-control networks, coastal radar and other surveillance capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, underground storage, and maritime assets, including naval bases and small boats. But there\u2019s no indication that U.S. military strikes are targeting Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure, or even the country\u2019s missile production capabilities, which could be used to deliver a nuclear bomb \u2014 which, of course, doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Instead, the U.S. is discretely focused on preventing Iran from blockading the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 a task that is only necessary because of Trump\u2019s ill-advised decision to go to war in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Had the U.S. never attacked Iran last February, Tehran would still be a year away from building a nuclear weapon and the Persian Gulf would be open to maritime traffic. Going to war led to the closure of the strait, a global spike in oil prices, tens of billions in military costs and, above all, 18 U.S. service members killed in action.<\/p>\n

No matter how Hegseth and others try to spin it, no matter their efforts to scare Americans into believing that the U.S. is fighting a war to keep a nuclear weapon out of Iran\u2019s hands, the evidence is clear: The Iran war has little to do with nukes.<\/p>\n

Trump, Hegseth and those in charge went to war for reasons that still remain unclear, and now, as the situation has spiraled deeply out of control, are ramping up their lies about it to the American people.\u00a0Democrats who criticized Hegseth on Tuesday for exaggerating the impact of U.S. military strikes and referred to the war\u2019s growing unpopularity need to make this point, loudly and consistently.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S. is not fighting \u2014 and troops are not dying \u2014 to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. This war is continuing because of the rank incompetence and the repeated lies of America\u2019s leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more MaddowBlog<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. is not fighting \u2014 and troops are not dying \u2014 to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump and Hegseth aren\u2019t telling the truth about why we\u2019re at war with Iran - Long Distance Movers USA<\/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:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=424\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump and Hegseth aren\u2019t telling the truth about why we\u2019re at war with Iran - 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