Originally Published: 09 JUL 26 17:04 GMT

Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN

(CNN) — When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran in February, he cited its supposedly imminent nuclear threat. But there was always a problem with that: He’d spent eight months asserting the program had already been “obliterated” last year.

Just two weeks before the war began, in fact, Trump claimed US and Israeli strikes in June 2025 had left Iran without even a “potential capability” for nukes.

Now, as Trump looks to extract himself from the highly unpopular war, he’s offering more confounding signals about the state of Iran’s nuclear threat.

After more than four months of war and major costs to the US and world economy — all geared towards the still-unfulfilled goals of obtaining Iran’s nuclear materials and a deal that keeps Tehran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon — Trump is suddenly suggesting none of that is even necessary.

He’s claiming the war is already a success because Iran has already been denuclearized.

It seems Iran’s nuclear program has magically gone back to “obliterated” status — at precisely the moment it looks like Trump’s efforts to cut a deal are truly falling apart.

Trump made this argument repeatedly on Wednesday at a NATO summit in Turkey.

When asked whether the war had hit a “strategic dead end,” Trump assured that it hadn’t because it was already a success.

“I was there for one reason: that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I call it, we denuclearize Iran,” Trump said. “And that’s happened; they will never have a nuclear weapon.”

The president said Iran’s nuclear materials are now “so far down under a mountain” that they’re virtually unobtainable. He also cited US monitoring capabilities, arguing officials can see the nuclear sites on cameras and ensure nobody can access them.

“There’s no way they have a nuclear weapon,” Trump added.

At a separate event, he was pressed on how he was going to get Iran’s nuclear materials. He claimed that the United States, in effect, already has them.

“We’ve already got the nuclear material, because it’s so far underground,” Trump said. “Nobody’s going to be able to get it except us.”

He added: “They can’t get it.”

“I think it’s a tremendous success,” Trump said in the first appearance.

A couple points.

First, this is merely the latest evidence that Trump is laying the groundwork for possibly throwing in the towel in Iran without achieving his major objectives.

The administration has repeatedly cast getting Iran’s nuclear materials as a must-have — a “red line,” in the words of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just six weeks ago.

But Trump has also conspicuously floated the idea that this might not be strictly necessary, because the materials are inaccessible to Iran and the areas can be monitored from space.

Perhaps the bigger point, though, is that the comments raise more major questions about the original stated justifications for the war — and whether the war was launched (and continued) under false pretenses.

Trump’s justifications were already a mess from the war’s earliest days, and not just because of the “obliterated” talk. The administration has also issued a constantly shifting set of four goals. And Trump’s initial threats to go to war back in January were focused not on the supposed nuclear threat but instead on regime change — a goal that he’s also nonsensically claimed he has already achieved by killing certain leaders, despite that not matching what actually constitutes regime change.

But Trump’s latest claims that Iran has suddenly been denuclearized forevermore is really difficult to square.

It’s certainly possible that strikes during this war have made the nuclear materials even more difficult to get to.

But by far the biggest strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites came back in June 2025, when Trump first claimed its nuclear program had been “obliterated.” And the major military actions in this war ended three months ago, when the first ceasefire was announced on April 7.

If Iran’s nuclear materials are now so buried that its program is basically done-for and a deal isn’t necessary, why wasn’t that the case three months ago? Why did the administration spend all this time pursuing a nuclear deal and say it still needed to get the materials? Why not just keep hitting the nuclear sites to further bury the materials, if that’s good enough?

It makes no sense.

It all points to a far less justifiable possibility for why Trump is making these arguments now: that he has lost patience with this war and recognizes a good deal is probably not going to happen. (Iran certainly doesn’t seem interested in cutting one, judging by its many apparent violations of the ceasefire.) So it’s best to start spinning why he’s getting out with so many of his goals unfulfilled.

But also consider where that would leave the war effort. It wouldn’t just be that Trump wouldn’t accomplish his goals; it would mean that the war came with some major costs for virtually no gain.

Besides the 13 lives of US service members lost in the conflict, at the top of that list would be the economic shock of the past few months and Iran’s now-demonstrated ability to control the Strait of Hormuz. The latter especially looms extremely large over the future of the Middle East and the world right now.

And judging by Trump’s most recent comments, it’s looking more and more like that might be the most significant result of this war.