President Donald Trump and his most vocal supporters have been using disinformation, fake videos, and mental gymnastics to try to spin the US military’s bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites as a complete and total victory that signals the end of a war instead of the beginning.
On Saturday night, with the B-2 stealth bombers that dropped a dozen GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs on the Fordow underground nuclear facility just beginning their flights back to the US, Trump declared the mission a complete success.
But rather than relying on information from his own intelligence agencies, satellite imagery, or on-the-ground reporting, Trump instead posted on Truth Social a screenshot of an X post from an anonymous account that claims to conduct open source intelligence investigations.
“Fordow is gone,” the account, which lists the website of a Zionist clothing company in its biography, wrote, providing no further information. Trump followed this up by claiming in a press conference that Fordow had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
It immediately became clear that the triumphant declarations were likely premature, with Trump’s own military officials pushing back against his assessment. “It would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there,” said General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Israeli military officials told The New York Times that while the facility had sustained significant damage, it had not been destroyed. Additionally, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at the Fordow facility had been moved before the bombing, while the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency told The New York Times that the highly enriched uranium previously stored at the Isfahan facility had been moved before it was targeted by US strikes.
Trump’s early declarations of success on Truth Social set the tone, though—and appear to have inspired others. Fox News host Sean Hannity, among the loudest proponents for bombing Iran in recent weeks, posted the same phrase the account Trump screenshotted did—”Fordow is gone”—on his Instagram account, alongside a video of a massive explosion. (After WIRED published this story, Hannity appeared to have deleted the post.)
The video, however, does not show Fordow and is instead of a December 2024 Israeli strike on a missile base in Tartous, Syria. Hannity’s post, which remains on the platform, had been viewed more than 5 million times as of Monday morning.
That same video and other obviously fake videos have been shared widely on platforms like X, Facebook, and TikTok, with accounts also claiming they show explosions at Fordow. In some cases, users on X asking Grok to verify the footage have been told by X’s AI-powered chatbot that the footage is real—even though it is not.
Despite the pushback from his own military, Trump has continued to claim that the Fordow facility had been destroyed. “Obliteration is the accurate term,” Trump wrote on Sunday evening in a Truth Social post.
Trump’s effort to frame the bombing as a decisive end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while heavily disputed by arms control experts, was picked up by supporters who claimed the bombing raid had effectively ended any potential conflict.
“Nobody is celebrating war,” right-wing commentator Dave Rubin wrote on X on Sunday morning. “People are celebrating the end of war.” Pro-Trump commentator Ben Shapiro hailed Trump’s actions as historic on his YouTube channel: “President Trump was never going to start world war three … he played this absolutely perfectly … President Trump was not dragged into a war, he managed this with absolutely stunning professionalism.”
However, just hours later, Trump raised the possibility of an extended military engagement in Iran when he suggested replacing the current leadership in a post on Truth Social.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!,” Trump wrote. Trump’s suggestion came after his own vice president, secretary of defense, and secretary of state had all declared that the bombing raid had nothing to do with regime change.
A MAGA cohort had warned for weeks that any attempt to replace the Iranian government would lead to a protracted war that would see US troops on the ground in the Middle East getting involved.
Charlie Kirk, a conservative political activist who had repeatedly voiced his opposition to war with Iran, appeared to make a U-turn on Sunday evening in response to Trump’s “regime change” post.
“A bottom-up revolution rises from the will of the people,” Kirk wrote on X. A top-down regime change is engineered by elites and the intel community. One is organic, the other is orchestrated, forced … President Trump is talking about an organic uprising.”
Kirk was mocked by other right-wing influencers for his U-turn. “Oh now it’s TOP DOWN US led regime change that your [sic] against,” influential podcasters Keith and Kevin Hodge, wrote on X in response to Kirk. “Not just regular old regime change. We get a new and improved regime change sponsored by the intel community and defense contractors!”
While some of the loudest opponents to engaging in military activity in Iran—such as Tucker Carlson—have yet to comment on Trump’s suggestion of regime change, many have criticized the weekend’s incidents.
“American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits,” US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a lengthy diatribe on X after the bombings. “I’m sick of it.”
Meanwhile, Alex Jones, the school-shooting conspiracist and Pizzagate conspiracy promoter who filed for bankruptcy in 2022, said Trump’s regime change comments would drag US troops into the conflict.
“Now Trump joins in, essentially calling for regime change, that’s called sleepwalking us into total war, not what we voted for,” Jones said on his Infowars show on Sunday night.
On Monday morning, Trump himself indicated that the fallout from the US bombing raid may continue for some time, writing a post apparently in response to speculation that Iran will close one of the world’s busiest oil shipping channels, the Strait of Hormuz.
“EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, before adding: “To The Department of Energy: DRILL, BABY, DRILL!!! And I mean NOW!!!”
