CNN: Trump's claim of drug factories in Iranian nuclear facilities was a 'slip of the tongue' - Sarmad
CNN reported that President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran had drug factories inside its nuclear facilities was the result of a slip of the tongue, yet he did not retract the statement to correct the record, leaving nuclear experts bewildered.
Trump made controversial remarks about the three Iranian nuclear sites targeted by the United States last year. Until Thursday evening, he had never previously alleged that these sites operated drug factories.
Trump’s comments, delivered during a large rally in Oklahoma, puzzled both the public and specialists in Iran’s nuclear program.
In this context, James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, expressed his complete astonishment at the claim in an email received by CNN.
He affirmed that the Fordow facility, which Trump said had been destroyed, had never been used for drug production, and no information confirmed its involvement in such activities.
The White House declined to provide any clarification regarding these remarks when queried by the network. However, a review of the full video of the speech reveals a clear hypothesis: it appears the president made a verbal slip, and, consistent with his known stubbornness, he stood by his position without correcting it—a behavior he has exhibited for years. Admitting to a simple mistake is rare for a president who prides himself on always appearing correct on camera.
While discussing his efforts to counter Iran, Trump spoke about the stealth bombers that targeted nuclear facilities in June last year. He was quoted as saying, “Then at 1:00 a.m., with no moon and pitch-black darkness, those amazing fighters, flown by the best pilots in the world, dropped their payloads, and every bomb went straight through the ventilation shafts and landed inside… actually inside those drug factories. That’s what they were doing; they had nuclear facilities and drug facilities. They were trafficking drugs and also working in the nuclear field. But those drug factories, which were operating as nuclear sites, were hit very hard.”
Why did this statement come out?
The exact reason may never be known for certain. However, before he began speaking about Iran, Trump had been discussing his efforts to thwart the smuggling of illegal drugs in the Caribbean region, as well as the U.S. military operation that led to the arrest of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It appeared that his initial comment about bombing Iranian drug factories was merely a slip of the tongue resulting from a mix-up between his previous remarks about illegal drugs and Venezuela.
Radioactive Pharmaceuticals
In an attempt to offer a possible explanation, Acton suggested that Trump might have recalled Iran’s occasional references to the fact that legal drugs known as radiopharmaceuticals, used to diagnose and treat certain medical conditions, are produced in nuclear reactors.
However, Acton later pointed out that the Fordow facility, which Trump clearly appeared to be referring to broadly on Thursday, is an enrichment center that contains no nuclear reactor. Therefore, even under this lenient interpretation, Trump’s remarks remain inaccurate. He concluded that the most likely scenario is that Trump simply made an unintentional error.
CNN’s analysis concluded that Trump had merely made a slip of the tongue and proceeded without correcting it.
