Iran was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program at a new site “protected by granite” after the U.S. struck three of its nuclear facilities last summer, according to President Donald Trump.
During a press conference on the sidelines of a House Republican lawmaker conference in Doral, Florida, Trump told reporters the Iranian regime “was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site” after Operation Midnight Hammer struck its Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan facilities last June, before he ordered Operation Epic Fury more than a week ago.
“They couldn’t go back to where they were, the three sites that we obliterated, but they were starting work at another site, a different site, a different kind of site, and that was protected by granite,” Trump said Monday evening. “They wanted it protected. Granite is pretty good, but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper. They wanted to go a lot deeper, and they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles.”
The Fordow Uranium Enrichment Plant was also heavily fortified underneath a mountain before Trump deployed the GBU-57A/B MOP “bunker buster” bombs against it, the first time those bombs had been used in combat.
Trump’s comments come after he told CBS News on Monday afternoon that Operation Epic Fury, which has put pressure on the world’s crude oil market and, as a result, gas prices, is “very complete, pretty much.” The stock market rallied shortly afterward.
But when asked about his remarks to CBS News after War Secretary Pete Hegseth told the same network the previous day that Operation Epic Fury is “only just the beginning,” Trump said during the press conference, “I think it could be both,” though he added the conflict is “ending soon.”
TRUMP GRAPPLES WITH THE GREATEST COST OF HIS WAR IN IRAN: THE HUMAN COST
During the 30-minute press conference, Trump was peppered on Operation Epic Fury, from the strike against a school in southern Iran to whether Vice President JD Vance, whose foreign policy before becoming a member of the president’s administration was anti-interventionist, supported the mission.
“I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic,” Trump said of Vance. “I felt it was something we had to do.”