Outside the Beltway

Trump’s Nuclear Folly

Plus: Pete visits the Hill.

Steven L. Taylor · Saturday, May 2, 2026 · 4 comments

The Secretary of Belligerence, Pete Hegseth (aka the Bro of War), testified to Congress this week. While he excels at such skills as smirking, dodging questions, and getting more than a bit shouty, he did not provide much in the way of helpful explanation concerning the ongoing excursion in Iran. Indeed, he provided a great new twist to the War Powers Act: cease-fire days don’t count. I think that’s kind of like cheat days when you have a donut (but just one!) when you are on a low-carb diet.

Shh! Nobody tell him that a naval blockade is an act of war!

One thing Hegseth did do this week was emphasize concerns over Iran’s nuclear potential.

For example:

That clip kind of makes my brain hurt, given the fact that, as a lifelong reader and writer, I am aware that words are supposed to mean things. Knowing something about international relations and politics, as well as basic cost-benefit analysis, adds to the pain of it all.

For example, this administration’s usage of “obliterated” has essentially become like what we all did as kids, saying a certain word over and over and over until it loses meaning (the internet informs me that this is called “semantic satiation“-so if you learn nothing else today, maybe you learned that like I did).

Anyhoo, for those keeping score at home, to “obliterate” means to “destroy utterly.” It does not mean, as Hegseth suggests, burying something. Perhaps Pete means “entomb”? Inter? Cover with rocks and garbage?

But, of course, the Möbius strip that is the explanation about the war is that we “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capability by burying their enriched uranium and not destroying it, but we still had to go to war because they still have nuclear “ambitions” and because they are building a “conventional shield” (you know, the one that was utterly ineffective against our conventional attacks).

Indeed, in other testimony, he kept making it sound as if any cost is worth paying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon (despite all the aforementioned obliteration). For example:

I wonder how much the Iranian’s would have charged to sell us their enriched uranium? If no price is too high, I guess we should have paid it as per Hegseth’s, shall we say, logic?

Or, I wonder, if the cost of having to adhere to an agreement negotiated by Barack Hussein Obama was worth it?

Well, apparently, that cost was too high.

Setting aside a discussion of what the exact threat to the US or its interests would be of a nuclear-armed Iran, the sad reality is that we are where we are because Donald “Art of the Deal” Trump withdrew the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and promised to provide us with a much better deal.

You know, the same way he promised lifelong marriage to Ivana Marie Zelníčková and Marla Maples (but I digress) and that Trump University would provide some kind of actual education (which it did by proving the adage that a fool and his money are soon parted).

The NYT has an excellent analysis of the situation: How Iran Accumulated 11 Tons of Enriched Uranium.

Since eight years ago when President Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal with Tehran, Iran has accumulated 22,000 pounds, or 11 tons, of enriched uranium. But the fate of Iran’s stockpile remains a mystery, two months after the United States began a war meant to prevent Iran from ever building an atomic bomb.

[…]

Iran lacked a single bomb’s worth of uranium in 2018, when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the pact and reimposed a series of tough economic sanctions.

Then Iran began to enrich above the deal’s limit, first at low enrichment levels to pressure the West and then up to 20 percent in early 2021, just before Mr. Trump left office.

The Biden administration tried, unsuccessfully, to restore aspects of the abandoned deal. Throughout the negotiations, Iran enriched uranium to an unprecedented level of up to 60 percent — a hairsbreadth away from the preferred grade for atom bombs.

With Mr. Trump again in office in 2025, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium grew at the fastest rate since the International Atomic Energy Agency started reporting.

Check out this graph. It may be difficult to spot, but if you squint, you can see where the JCPOA took effect and the consequences of the US withdrawal from said deal. Try not to strain your eyes

Heckuva job, Trumpie.

The reality remains, to conclude, that this war has emboldened the Iranians to use the Strait of Hormuz as a weapon, it has likely shifted regime leadership into a more hardline space, and it has taught them that they need a nuclear weapon as a deterrent.

So, to sum up: if the administration’s main goal is an Iran that has no nuclear ambitions, they appear to be doing everything in their power to ensure the opposite.

Maybe threatening to destroy all their bridges and power plants will help? Perhaps a threat to end their civlization will compel them to eschew any desire for the one weapon that has been shown to deter attacks of the kind they have recently experienced?

I know! Let’s send in a real estate developer and an investor with conflicts of interest to negotiate a peace deal.

That’ll solve the problem.

tl:dr, Trump essentially created the problem he is now trying to solve by spending massive amounts of money, killing people, and doing massive damage to the global economy (with collateral damage to our alliances in Europe and the Persian Gulf), all to create a situation that increases the chance that Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon. As a bonus, all of this will likely increase, not decrease, the chances of nuclear proliferation globally (not only because of regional concerns, but lots of countries that were willing to rely on the US will be less confident in that stance going forward).