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← The "Obliterated" Claim

The White House "Obliterated" Release of June 25, 2025

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED. The release is on whitehouse.gov and every quote below is from it.

Three days after the strikes, with the DIA assessment in the news, the White House published a page titled "Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News" (whitehouse.gov, June 25, 2025). It is the administration's full case in one place, and it is worth reading closely for whose voices it uses.

The American voices​

  • President Trump: "Monumental Damage... Obliteration is an accurate term!... Bullseye!!!"
  • Defense Secretary Hegseth: "Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons," and "anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission." Of the DIA report: "Any assessment that tells you otherwise is speculating with other motives."
  • Secretary of State Rubio: "That story is a false story and it's one that really shouldn't be re-reported," and "This was complete and total obliteration."
  • Envoy Steve Witkoff: "We put 12 bunker buster bombs on Fordow... there's no doubt that it was obliterated." He called contrary suggestions "completely preposterous."
  • Vice President Vance: "That was the objective of the mission, to destroy that Fordow nuclear site," and, more carefully, Iran is "much further away from a nuclear program today than they were 24 hours ago."
  • DNI Gabbard: "The operation was a resounding success... obliterating key Iranian capabilities needed to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon." This from the official who, three months earlier, told Congress Iran "is not building a nuclear weapon." See Gabbard's June Reversal.

The Israeli voices​

The release leans on Israel to vouch for America's strike:

  • The Israel Atomic Energy Commission: the Fordow strike "rendered the enrichment facility inoperable" and set Iran back "by many years."
  • IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir: "we set it back by years, I repeat, years."

The government that launched the war, and campaigned for America to join it, was cited as the authority that the American part had worked. See Netanyahu's Campaign and the Joint War.

The outside voices​

  • IAEA Director General Grossi, June 23: "Given the explosive payload utilized, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred." Note "expected": the inspectors had not been inside. See Grossi's Statements.
  • David Albright, Institute for Science and International Security: the strikes "effectively destroyed Iran's centrifuge enrichment program."
  • Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei: "Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that's for sure."

A companion page followed on June 26 under the heading "Experts Agree" (linked from the release).

What the release does not contain​

  • It does not say where the 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium went. See The Missing Uranium.
  • It does not quote the Pentagon's intelligence agency, whose assessment it was written to answer. See The DIA Preliminary Assessment.
  • It does not use General Caine's own word from the June 22 briefing, "designed to severely degrade." It uses "obliterated."

The line kept going​

In December 2025, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: "The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government's assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran's nuclear capabilities" (New York Post, as relayed by @TheRealSantino). That statement came as Netanyahu flew to Mar-a-Lago to pitch new strikes on Iran. Users on X were still pointing to the June 25 page in 2026. By March 2026, the United States was at war with Iran again, over the same program. See After the Ceasefire.

Status: Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Eyal Zamir, Rafael Grossi, David Albright and Anna Kelly are alive, as far as these sources show. Esmaeil Baghaei: Unknown.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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