President Donald Trump continues to make false and unproven claims about the war in Iran.
Trump claimed Monday that “nobody” anticipated Iran to retaliate by concentrating on US allies in the area. In truth, numerous consultants had publicly warned that Iran may or would seemingly reply this fashion – and prime Iranian officers had themselves vowed that Iran would goal close by US allies if attacked.
Trump claimed {that a} former president had instructed him in a non-public dialog that they wished they’d attacked Iran as Trump did. But aides to all 4 dwelling former presidents instructed NCS on Monday that they hadn’t spoken to Trump about the war.
Trump additionally repeated his long-debunked lie {that a} ebook he launched in 2000 warned that Osama bin Laden was going to commit a significant terrorist assault and mentioned the authorities wanted to “get” bin Laden. In truth, the ebook contained no warnings or recommendation about bin Laden.
And Trump argued Sunday that media retailers needs to be charged with treason for supposedly spreading faux movies of a US plane service on hearth. But the White House couldn’t present a single instance of a US media outlet selling the faux movies.
Here is a truth test of these 4 claims.
In a social media post Sunday evening, Trump criticized Iran over faux movies, generated by synthetic intelligence, purportedly depicting Iranian navy successes in the war. He then advised “TREASON” prices towards media retailers that he claimed had coordinated with Iran to unfold one of these fakes.
Trump wrote: “For instance, Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media, shows our great USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean. Not only was it not burning, it was not even shot at — Iran knows better than to do that! The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!”
But there isn’t a proof that mainstream US media retailers promoted faux movies of the Lincoln on hearth, a lot much less that mainstream US retailers “generated” the story or coordinated with Iran to unfold it.
As of Tuesday, NCS might solely discover mainstream US retailers that had debunked faux movies of the Lincoln, together with PolitiFact, Newsweek and The New York Times. When we requested the White House on Monday for any examples of media retailers that truly promoted the Lincoln fakes, spokesperson Anna Kelly responded with hyperlinks to 3 international retailers – one Israeli, one Turkish, one Saudi – that had quoted baseless Iranian statements about having struck the Lincoln.
Even these international stories didn’t embrace faux movies. More importantly, Trump’s “TREASON” accusation clearly implied that it was US retailers, not retailers in different nations, that had unfold the Lincoln fakes; hypothetical treason can solely be dedicated by individuals who owe allegiance to the US, and media retailers in different nations don’t.
Kelly went on to make a declare that media retailers, together with US retailers, are “constantly amplifying” Iranian propaganda. That’s a distinct assertion than the particular Trump assertion about the Lincoln we had requested about.
Trump’s 2000 ebook and Osama bin Laden
Trump repeated a lie about his nationwide safety acumen that he has been telling, in numerous forms, for more than a decade.
After claiming Monday that he had accurately predicted that Iran would use the Strait of Hormuz as a “weapon” in war, and that allies the US protects wouldn’t assist the US in occasions of want, he added, “I predicted all of it. I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did it. I said, ‘You’d better get him, he’s a bad guy.’ I watched him be interviewed one time and I said, ‘That’s a bad guy. You’d better get him.’ One year before, exactly – I wrote it in a book. You can even check – about a year before the World Trade Center came down.”
We checked. Trump’s 2000 ebook, “The America We Deserve,” didn’t make any predictions about bin Laden or supply any recommendation about easy methods to take care of bin Laden. The ebook – which was ghostwritten by an writer who labored with Trump – contained simply one passing mention of bin Laden.
It mentioned: “Instead of one looming crisis hanging over us, we face a bewildering series of smaller crises, flash points, standoffs, and hot spots. We’re not playing the chess game to end all chess games anymore. We’re playing tournament chess – one master against many rivals. One day we’re all assured that Iraq is under control, the UN inspectors have done their work, everything’s fine, not to worry. The next day the bombing begins. One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”
That’s nowhere close to what Trump claimed the ebook mentioned.
Defending his determination to go to war with Iran, Trump claimed twice on Monday {that a} former president endorsed the determination in a dialog with him.
“I’ve spoken to a certain president – who I like actually – a past president, former president. He said, ‘I wish I did it. I wish I did,’ but they didn’t do it. I’m doing it,” he said at one Monday occasion. Asked which president it was, Trump mentioned, “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career even though he’s got no career left.”
Trump then repeated the story at a second Monday occasion, claiming that the unnamed former president mentioned, “I wish I did what you did. Could have done it.” He mentioned the former president wasn’t George W. Bush, however he wouldn’t say whether or not it was Bill Clinton.
We definitely can’t say definitively whether or not a supposed non-public dialog occurred or not. But aides to all of the dwelling former presidents – Clinton, Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden – all told NCS on Monday that these males hadn’t spoken to Trump since the war started, not to mention instructed him they wished they’d attacked Iran. Even after NCS knowledgeable the White House of these denials, it didn’t reply to a different request to determine the president who supposedly made the declare.
Trump has a long history of describing supposed non-public conversations that by no means occurred.
Trump claimed Monday that Iran wasn’t “supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East.” He mentioned, “So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”
Asked later Monday whether or not he was “surprised that nobody briefed you ahead of time that that might be their retaliation,” Trump mentioned, “Nobody, nobody, no, no, no. No, the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit – they were – I wouldn’t say friendly countries, they were like neutral. They lived with them for years.”
But it’s merely not true that “nobody” anticipated Iran to retaliate towards close by nations. Numerous analysts had lengthy mentioned that such an Iranian response was potential or seemingly – and Iran itself had warned that it deliberate to focus on US allies in the area if attacked.
“Iran said it was going to do it. I expected it. Everyone who follows Iran to any extent expected it,” Alan Eyre, a fellow at the Middle East Institute assume tank and former State Department official, posted on X on Monday in response to Trump’s feedback.
“Everyone” is just too sturdy; some analysts were skeptical Iran would reply this fashion. But many definitely thought it might or might occur. Eyre himself had posted in February that “Iran sees no value in a calibrated, limited response, but rather sees regional destabilization as the only way to restore its degraded deterrence.”
Arta Moeini, managing director of the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy assume tank, posted on X on Monday: “We ALL said this is exactly what was going to happen: a hardened Islamic Republic, a region-wide war to break (Gulf Cooperation Council) economies, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to precipitate a global energy crisis.”
Again, not everybody mentioned that, however many did. Moeni had warned in February that the initiation of a war on Iran would imply “all-out regional war” and that Iran’s then-supreme chief Ali Khamenei had “decided he prefers regional war that could re-establish Iranian deterrence to a bad peace.”
Iran threatened regional assaults
Iran had not made any secret of its intentions.
In late January, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was quoted in the nation’s semi-official Fars information company as saying, “Neighboring countries are our friends, but if their soil, sky, or waters are used against Iran, they will be considered hostile.” In early February, The Associated Press reported that Ali Khamenei had told a crowd in Tehran: “The Americans must be aware that if they wage a war this time, it will be a regional war.” Then, on February 19, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations despatched a letter declaring that, if Iran was attacked, “all bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force in the region would constitute legitimate targets in the context of Iran’s defensive response.”
US allies in the area had been involved about the chance of dealing with assaults. Politico reported in February that “according to four Arab officials from two countries, the president and top aides have listened to their concerns about a US attack on Iran leading to counter-attacks on neighboring countries that could spark a protracted regional conflict,” whereas a February article in a outstanding Israeli newspaper said, “For the Gulf states, the most immediate danger is an Iranian response directed at their territory. Energy infrastructure, desalination facilities, ports and, above all, US military bases hosted on their soil would likely be prime targets.”
Experts warned that Iran might assault US allies in the area
Various consultants had warned in pre-war public feedback that Iran might reply to a US assault with assaults on neighboring nations.
In February, Nate Swanson, a former State Department official who served as Iran director on the National Security Council between 2022 and 2025, wrote in Foreign Affairs journal that “if conflict with the United States deepens, Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly” – amongst different regional retaliation.
Also in February, NBC News quoted Joseph Votel, a retired Army common who was commander of the US forces in the Middle East from 2016 to 2019, as saying, “What could be different this time is that they do try to regionalize this, as opposed to just going after Israel or going after US bases.” NBC wrote that Votel mentioned one chance was that “Iran would try to target oil refineries in the Persian Gulf states in a bid ‘to drag everybody into this and turn this into a much more protracted conflict.’”
Former Pentagon official Bilal Saab wrote in a February article in the London-based journal Al Majalla: “The strategy for Iran in a potential confrontation with the United States is simple: withstand the first volley of US strikes, respond by targeting symbolic US and allied assets in the region, inflict casualties on US forces, and drag out the conflict.”
Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the British assume tank Chatham House, wrote in The Guardian newspaper in February {that a} war like the one the US and Israel ended up launching “would probably trigger Iranian regional escalation ranging from attacks on US bases, shipping lanes and Israeli cities, and maybe even some proxy mobilisation across the Gulf.” And the International Crisis Group nonprofit warned in February that Trump’s adoption of rhetoric favoring regime change in Iran elevated the chance that Iran would, amongst different penalties, “target other US Middle Eastern partners” and “lay waste to critical infrastructure.”
That’s only a pattern of such warnings.