Trump’s Iran Bluster This Week Revealed the Only Thing That Really Matters to Him

“These people are, these people are crazy,” President Donald Trump told me in an interview Monday. “And frankly, if they ever had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it within one day,” he said.

I had heard Trump say that before, and because I had, I moved on too quickly from that critical point when he made it. If indeed a president of the United States believes Iran would use a nuclear weapon it built, that president is obliged to do what is necessary to stop what remains of that regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Full stop.

My error was in not pausing to ask Trump why he believed that the Islamic Republic would use any nuclear weapon it obtained, and whether others in the administration agreed with him.

The world has grown used to nations having nukes and not using them. But what if the Islamic Republic, driven as it is by a fanatical theology that believes in martyrdom, is not constrained by the realities that would follow the use of nuclear weapons against Israel?

Israel has a “second strike” capability. If it were hit by a devastating device, it would certainly take an exponentially more destructive revenge on the Islamic Republic and perhaps on every nation that aided Iran in obtaining the nuke. Israel will not see a second Holocaust unfold without using every tool in its arsenal to save what it can and destroy that which killed millions of its citizens.

The world should recoil in horror at this scenario, but also ought to consider the probability of its occurrence. Everyone should think long and hard about the irrationality of the Islamic Republic’s behavior over 47 years. It doesn’t share a border with Israel. Israel hadn’t mounted anything other than very precise attacks on Iranian scientists, generals, and proxy forces in Lebanon and Gaza in the 45 years before Iran struck Israel directly on April 14, 2024.

Israel had bombed an Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 of that year. Eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force were killed in that strike, including the commander of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, Mohammad Reza Zahedan. But like the warfare that has long existed between Iran and all of its many enemies, strikes against Iranian personnel and proxies have been extremely limited and very precise, all designed to stop Iran’s endless aggressions.

The actions of the Islamic Republic have never been those of an ordinary nation-state since the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in 1979. It is a theocracy, and unlike every other nuclear nation on the planet, its prime directive is an eschatological one. Read up on “Twelver theology” and your eyebrows ought to rise. Grasp the animating theology of the regime, and you will understand why Trump believes as he does.

Mostafa Khamenei, center, brother of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, leads a prayer over the coffin of his late father, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before his burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

" data-large-file="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?w=696" src="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?w=696" alt="Mostafa Khamenei, center, brother of Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, leads a prayer over the coffin of his late father, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, before his burial." class="wp-image-4643768" srcset="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg 1024w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?resize=300,200 300w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?resize=768,512 768w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?resize=150,100 150w, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/AP26191256016156.jpg?resize=696,464 696w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px">Mostafa Khamenei, center, brother of Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, leads a prayer over the coffin of his late father, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before his burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, Thursday, July 9, 2026. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

My focus in Monday’s interview was on “Pickaxe Mountain”, the fourth of four sites where the U.S. has long suspected the Iranian nuclear program was housed. The three sites that were operational when Israel launched Operation Rising Lion and the U.S. launched Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025 were indeed obliterated. The highly enriched uranium is buried deep underground. The complex devices and procedures needed to advance the program to an actual weapon were smashed.

Pickaxe Mountain is the fourth facility. But it was not considered operational when the U.S.’s Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion began on Feb. 28 of this year. It has not been bombed even as the sites where Iran rushed to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program were comprehensively attacked.

The 40 days of strikes aimed to destroy the entire production chain of the nuclear weapons program, as well as the factories that produced arsenals of missiles and drones.

But again this year, Pickaxe Mountain was not targeted. Experts who study the open source information available about that site, it’s a massive construction project excavated at depths that may have made it impervious to America’s most massive non-nuclear munitions, worry about what sort of activity is underway in those tunnels.

Trump assured me that our space force is indeed watching the site closely and can (and will) target it soon. That was a relief to hear.

But the key statement he made is much more troubling than one site’s status: that if the Islamic Republic “ever had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it within one day.”

That is the key. That is the bottom line. If you believe that, you don’t want a memorandum of understanding 2.0 or any agreement that doesn’t begin with immediate and comprehensive inspections of every site in Iran linked to nuclear weapons research, including and indeed first in line, Pickaxe Mountain. If you believe that, it’s the only priority.

TRUMP’S LEGACY WILL BE DEFINED BY THE SUPREME COURT AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Which is why physicist and renowned nuclear weapons expert David Albright told my audience earlier this month that if Iran really wants to abandon its ambitions for nuclear weapons, it will begin with an admission of its past activities to build a bomb and then allow inspections at Pickaxe Mountain.

Peace would be easy if Iran’s fanatical leaders wanted peace. Trump would love nothing more than an agreement that saw Iran abandon its most dangerous ambitions. Unless and until the Islamic Republic gives up its nuclear dreams, the war will go on. And it must.