Donald Trump has added Iran “doing drugs” to the list of reasons for starting his unpopular war eight months ago.
The president has long said the ongoing conflict with the Islamic Republic, which began at the end of February, was launched to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
He has also previously hinted at the possibility of regime change in Iran, calling for the Iranian people to overthrow the country’s rulers following protests earlier this year.
However, speaking at a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, Thursday, Trump unveiled a new reason for the war as he boasted of destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities in Operation Midnight Hammer, which was launched in June 2025.
“They went from Missouri and then at one o’clock in the morning, with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really,” Trump said.
“That’s what they were doing. They were nuclear and drugs. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. These drug factories/nuclear factories were hit so hard.”
In the early days of the war, which saw the death of then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump called for the Iranian people to “take over your government.”
When this failed to happen, and with Iran closing the key shipping route the Strait of Hormuz, the war has dragged on with no end in sight.
Repeated polls show it to be deeply unpopular among American voters, with a CNN/SSRS poll found that 73 percent disapproved of the president’s handling of the conflict.
Some 75 percent of respondents said that Trump does not have a clear plan in the war compared to just 25 percent who thought he did. The survey was carried out between September 16-17 using a representative sample of 1,206 people.
Although this appears to be the first mention of drugs as being a factor in attacking Iran, Trump previously has used drugs as the justification for military action against other countries during his second term.
The Trump administration has launched dozens strikes on vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean that it has claimed were transporting drugs into the United States.
And in January the U.S. abducted Venezuela’s then-President, Nicolás Maduro, who now faces charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine to the United States, among other charges - all of which he denies.
