October 6, 2026
An unusual statement made by US President Donald Trump inflamed tensions between Washington and Tehran, following his claim that Iranian nuclear facilities targeted by US strikes last year were also being used as “drug factories.” This prompted the Iranian side to respond angrily, calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency to intervene to expose what it described as “lies.”
In an official response, Iran’s mission to international organizations in Vienna stated: “After the big lie about Iranian nuclear weapons, another big lie about drug production is now surfacing, but the liar must have a good memory.” The mission stressed that these facilities are “under surveillance around the clock, 24 hours a day,” calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency to take immediate action to clarify the truth of the American accusations and expose what it described as “brazen lies” related to facilities subject to international guarantees.
Tehran accused Washington of creating new pretexts to justify military operations, stressing that “creating pretexts is easier than acknowledging the fact that attacking, bombing, and plundering other peoples is for the sake of hegemony, and not for democracy, non-proliferation, or, as is recently claimed, drugs.”
These developments came against the backdrop of statements made by Trump during a public gathering in the state of Oklahoma, in which he spoke about the American strikes that targeted three Iranian nuclear facilities last year. Trump claimed that American fighters dropped their bombs “directly through the ventilation holes,” adding: “Inside those drug factories, in fact, that is what they were doing, they were nuclear and other drug facilities.”
This statement raised widespread questions among observers and experts specializing in Iranian nuclear affairs, because there was no declared explanation to support it. In the same context, CNN reported that the White House refused to provide any clarification of Trump’s statements the next day, while American media suggested that the president had made a mistake in his expression, but preferred to stick to his statement instead of correcting it.
This new verbal confrontation comes to cast a shadow over the Iranian nuclear file, which represents the focus of ongoing tension between Washington and Tehran, at a time when indirect contacts and negotiations continued between the two countries, in light of the repercussions of the military confrontation, US sanctions, and continued economic pressure on Iran.
