Breaking down Trump’s new ‘drug factories’ claim about Iranian nuclear sites

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/03/politics/trump-drug-factories-claim-iran

President Donald Trump has said a lot of things about the three Iranian nuclear facilities the US attacked last year. Until Thursday night, he had never publicly claimed these facilities were also “drug factories.”

Trump’s comments at a rally in Oklahoma bewildered not only average Americans but also experts on Iran’s nuclear program.

“Wow…That one is new to me,” James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a Friday email after CNN sent him a video of Trump’s remarks. “To my knowledge, the Fordow facility, whose destruction Trump is describing, was not being used for drug production and neither had I previously heard any allegation (credible or otherwise) that it was.”