Trump Claims Iran Developing Missiles To Hit US, Contradicting Intel Reports
With nuclear talks hanging in the balance, and the potential for yet another US war of choice in the Middle East, President Donald Trump escalated the rhetoric Tuesday night, warning that Iran is moving beyond just regional missile capabilities and setting its sights farther west by developing missiles capable of hitting the United States.
During his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Trump claimed, "They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America."
It seemed a transparent attempt to make the American people believe they are under direct threat from Tehran, in order to justify potential near-future strikes, however flimsy the case might be. So far Washington's main talking point has been that Iran simply can never have a nuclear weapon and so something has to be done - and this actually does resonate with some sectors of the American public.
But Tehran setting its sites on directly attacking the US homeland is a huge stretch, with no serious analyst so much as suggesting the Islamic Republic has the capability or is even close.
US intelligence assessments have been very conservative on this. For example, in 2025, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated that Iran could potentially field a militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035 "should Tehran decide to pursue the capability."
Given US intelligence also has not concluded that such a decision had been made, this means Iran is likely at least a decade away from even being close to possessing such an ultra long range missile.
The US mainland is some 6000 miles away from western Iran, and currently Iran's longest range missile is said to reach just under 1900 miles - a huge gap.
Iran's ballistic missile focus has always been developing with an eye on the country's number one nemesis in the region: Israel.
There's a broad understanding even among the Western public that in reality Washington's anti-Iran stance has much more to do with defending Israel than the US homeland, which is clearly not under immediate threat from Tehran. There's not so much as been a terror attack carried out by a single Iranian Shia operative on American soil in all of history.
Iran is willing to scale back uranium enrichment from 60% to roughly 3.6% and pause enrichment activities for seven years under a draft framework expected in Geneva, an Arab diplomat familiar with the proposal tells Kan News. Tehran opposes shipping hundreds of kilograms of…
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So it seems the White House continues to be in search of a rationale and narrative to sell the public amid the major Pentagon build-up in the region. But polls by and large suggest most Americans still aren't buying it.