At a campaign rally in Durant, Oklahoma, on October 1, 2026, Trump retold the June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and added a new target. The B-2s, he said, “unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. 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 transcription by Mediaite and HuffPost. The Washington Examiner's version differs slightly.
Mediaite said it appears to be the first time Trump has cited drug factories in Iran as a target. The June 2025 operation destroyed three nuclear facilities, as the Washington Examiner describes it; Trump offered nothing further on the drug claim. Some headlines said Trump claimed he started the Iran war over drugs. He was describing the June 2025 strikes, not the war that began on February 28, 2026.