America's Talking - Iran Disputes U.S. Claims Nuclear Facilities Destroyed

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

(The Center Square) – Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday that the U.S. gained nothing from its strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Khamenei, in his first public comments since a ceasefire with Israel on Tuesday, said the U.S. "gained no achievements" from strikes on Fordow, a key nuclear site in Iran. U.S. President Donald Trump has said the strikes "obliterated" Iran nuclear facilities. On Wednesday he assessed Iran's nuclear program was destroyed. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_743ba3d3-b5f8-4858-9442-2810641cb4b5.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulib, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. It's been a tumultuous week in the Middle East with the U.S. last weekend joining Israel's bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites. The Trump administration says its use of massive bunker buster bombs dropped by B2 bombers in a meticulously planned stealth campaign obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities. Iran disputes that and attempted to retaliate by firing missiles at a U.S. military base in Qatar,

but the missiles caused no damage. President Donald Trump then negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the terms of which both countries immediately violated. An angry Trump dropped an F-bomb on live TV when asked about Israel breaking the terms of the ceasefire, but things have mostly quieted since then. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's regional editor, Steve Wilson, a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard where he served as a fire control technician and participated in numerous drug busts and exercises with Allied navies. Steve, thank you for joining us. As of Friday morning, what's the latest on this conflict?

I think right now everything, the dust, the proverbial dust is just settling. Right now we're in a phase where we're trying to figure out, did we actually set their nuclear program back months, or years or maybe even weeks. The thing is with those bunker busters is you really need to have someone on the ground. I know Trump was talking about the Israelis had someone on the ground, some agents, and they quickly denied that. But you really need someone on the ground to find out how much damage was really done to these complexes, which are buried under tons of rock.

It was an incredible mission. seeing it play out, we're not actually seeing it play out, but hearing about it and how these B-2 bombers flew from their base in Missouri all the way across the world with refueling midair, getting into Iran with absolutely no detection, no crossfire coming back at them, and then back to Missouri, all in what was like a 30-hour period, remarkable. Then Trump negotiates this peace deal, but it is immediately broken. And, boy, you could tell Trump was extremely upset when he dropped that F-bomb on national television. Well, I think the thing about the mission, I mean, at 37 hours in a cockpit, I mean, that's rough for any pilots.

But the bomber pilots of the U.S. Air Force, back when it was the strategic, Air Command during the Cold War. They were doing missions like this all the time. In fact, they were on airborne alert with armed nuclear bombs, which caused a couple of what they call Baruchin arrows, which were problematic. But they've been doing this for years. But when you think about how many planes were involved in this strike, 125s aircraft, 52 refueling tankers. And what happens with these refueling tankers, they fly these little, what they call race track. patterns. And the B-2s, because these mops, as they call them, the massive ordinance penetrators are 30,000 pounds apiece, they've got two of them. The B-2s couldn't take off of the full

fuel load. So they had to actually refuel multiple times before they got over there. They call it feet wet, feet dry. So feet dry when you're in Iran, when they're feet wet back over the ocean, and they had to refuel again. So you're talking about. a massive, massive use of American air power. And this mission is one of those things. And the thing people don't realize is the synchronicity that was involved in setting this up. Of course, President Trump has been saying for years and years that Iran cannot and will not build a nuclear bomb. That is the biggest concern. Trump has also said he wants to get the U.S. out of war, peace through power, right? So some people have said that this contradicts what Trump

campaigned on. But when you think about the threat of a nuclear Iran, Iran who has vowed to destroy Israel, has vowed to destroy America, it's understandable that the president is standing by his word that he will not allow Iran to build nuclear bombs. I think one thing that's an issue for President Trump is, I think he was surprised that a lot of people in his base, the MAGA people, were not really excited about this strike. I think a lot of them felt like that this was an unwarranted incursion into a war between Israel and Iran, and he had, like you said, campaigned on no new foreign wars. And the thing is, with this strike, I think he was surprised by that. And it's interesting to note that we've had this kind of back and forth.

The Iranians are saying, no, you didn't set our nuclear program back. And he and Hegseth and others are saying that we obliterated it. We destroyed it. So the thing that's going to be interesting going forward for him is can he shore up his base at home? and also after the two weeks promise that he made that, oh, we're going to make a decision in two weeks and then we went ahead and did it, how does he repair himself diplomatically abroad? In the few moments we have left, Steve, I'm going to ask you to speculate. We have had a couple of days where there's been no crossfire missiles from Iran and Israel. But it's still a tenuous situation.

What comes next? Well, I think the issue for Israel and why they were so willing to agree to a ceasefire is they're running out of interceptor missiles that shoot down the Iranian ballistic missiles. And just from what I've seen, I think the Iranian ballistic missiles and their sophistication and ability to target pinpoint targets inside Israel, which is not a very big country, I think it caught them by surprise. And the thing is with these surface-dair missiles is we can't build a lot of them. I mean, you're talking maybe we can build 100 a year. And if you're, if, and supposedly Iran has like maybe a couple thousand ballistic missiles, that's math that just doesn't add up. Thank you for joining us today, Steve.

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