Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson has claimed that President Trump is preparing to launch a nuclear weapon against Iran in the coming days, alleging that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pressuring the U.S. administration to do so.
Carlson posted on X, stating that Netanyahu contacts Trump daily about the issue, citing an "informed observer." The podcaster suggested that Netanyahu, facing political pressure from recent Israeli election results, sees war as his only path to political survival. Carlson further alleged that Netanyahu is attempting to convince Trump to use a nuclear bomb on Iran's "Pickaxe Mountain," described as the regime's secret nuclear facility.
The post also claimed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Democratic Party leaders are following Netanyahu's lead, without providing evidence.
Carlson's assertion on X garnered over 53.1 million views and appears to build upon Trump's own recent statements about potentially destroying Pickaxe Mountain "within 10 minutes." However, the president has publicly stated that the U.S. does not need nuclear weapons and favors conventional bombs and economic pressure against Iran.
This is not the first time Carlson has made such claims. He stated on an April 1st broadcast that the world was moving toward the use of "weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, possible nuclear weapons," and has repeated similar assertions on at least four other occasions since then. Notably, he made a similar claim on October 15th, following Trump's threat to drop the "mother of all bombs" on Iran. Trump, however, dismissed this as referring to conventional, larger bombs, not nuclear missiles.
Carlson and Trump had a public rift last year after the former Fox News host criticized the war in Iran, leading to Trump reportedly expelling him from the MAGA movement.