When it comes to Iran’s nuclear program, the truth is not just elusive—it’s buried beneath layers of earth, reinforced concrete, political spin, half-truths, and outright misinformation. Whether you’re watching a press conference by President Trump or his surrogates, scrolling through your feed, or tuning into cable news, one thing is clear: nobody is telling the whole story.

Let’s start with the obvious: you cannot trust Donald Trump to give an accurate account of Iran’s nuclear capacity. He openly dismisses the findings of his intelligence agencies and advisors if they contradict his narrative. He is fond of quoting others who agree with him to avoid declarative statements.

Then comes the so-called “legacy media,” a term often used to describe mainstream outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and others that frequently fail to challenge their assumptions or go beyond their corporatized talking points. Stories on the President, his administration, the military, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions often cite anonymous sources, vague intelligence, or government leaks without sufficient scrutiny. Objectivity and truth become casualties when headlines are driven by clicks and narratives shaped by geopolitical loyalties.

I Call Bullshit

What we’re being sold is a mix of speculation, spin, and outright fiction, filtered through agendas and ideologies. And if you think any of it amounts to “truth,” you’re already being played.

Iran has spent decades playing cat-and-mouse with the international community, hiding enrichment sites, stonewalling inspectors, and cooking the books on uranium production. Anyone pretending Iran has ever been fully transparent is either lying or willfully ignorant.

The so-called nuclear deal (JCPOA) was President Obama’s political theater to justify an unearned Nobel Peace Prize, not a solution, as it provided Iran with a path to a nuclear weapon and ballistic missile delivery system. It didn’t give inspectors real access. It didn’t account for military sites. It didn’t force full disclosure of uranium stockpiles. It was a game of “trust but don’t verify,” which Iran was all too happy to exploit. They knew Western diplomats were more interested in optics than in enforcement.

We Just Don’t Know

Today, it’s even worse. With international inspectors largely sidelined, no complete audits, and Iran refusing to play by any rules, any statement you hear about the destruction of Iran’s nuclear status or suggestions that Iran is “months away” or “years away” from resuming weapon production is often pure guesswork. And that guesswork is filtered through the lens of whoever benefits most from the fear or the denial.

Meanwhile, the legacy media play along, regurgitating talking points from anonymous officials and spin-doctoring intelligence leaks to match partisan narratives. And on social media, good luck finding clarity, you’re more likely to see algorithm-boosted disinformation from foreign bot troll farms or keyboard warriors who couldn’t locate Iran on a map.

Bottom Line

Some claim Iran is still “weeks or months away” from a deliverable nuclear device. Others suggest there’s “no serious threat.” But without hard data, both positions are built on speculation, not science. And that’s a dangerous game. After Israel bombed Iran's facilities, one might think that the Iranians were practical enough to load up their portable goodies and abandon a facility that was sure to be hit with a massive bunker-buster bomb.

The brutal truth: Without boots-on-the-ground inspections and a complete accounting of enriched uranium, no one actually knows what Iran’s nuclear capacity is.

So stop pretending we do.

Stop acting like your favorite politician, outlet, or influencer has a lock on the facts. They don’t. They’re guessing, spinning, and sometimes outright lying.

Until Iran allows complete, unrestricted inspections, military sites included, and delivers a verifiable inventory of its nuclear materials, everything else is just ideological fan fiction.

In national security, wishful thinking kills. And blind trust in narratives, whether from the right, left, or neighbors, isn’t just lazy. It’s dangerous.

What I do know is that Iran has the makings of a dirty bomb using widely dispersible uranium-based radioactive liquid or dispersible dust—a continuing credible threat. 

We are so screwed.

-- Steve