White House denies it is considering using nuclear weapons in Iran
Submitted by
Alex MacDonald
on
Tue, 04/07/2026 - 16:10
X account brands followers 'absolute buffoons' after many infer potential use of weaponry from JD Vance comments
An Iraqi schoolboy holds a portrait of Iran's slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a anti-US and Israeli demonstration in Baghdad on on April 7, 2026 (Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP)
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The US has denied it is considering using nuclear weapons in Iran following days of apocalyptic threats from US President Donald Trump.
The denial, posted on the White House X account, came in response to an inference from Vice President JD Vance that the US was considering deploying advanced and destructive weaponry.
"They’ve got to know we’ve got tools in our toolkit that we so far haven’t decided to use," said Vance, speaking during a visit to Hungary.
"The president of the United States can decide to use them, and he will decide to use them if the Iranians don’t change their course of conduct."
Coming shortly after Trump's warning that a "civilisation will die" on Tuesday evening if Iran did not open the Strait of Hormuz, some took the comment to be a reference to nuclear weapons.
The White House later on Tuesday denied this, however.
"Literally nothing @VP said here 'implies' this, you absolute buffoons," the White House posted on X.
The deployment of nuclear weapons against Iran would mark the first use of the deadly technology against human targets since World War 2, when the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The destructive impact of nuclear weaponry and the potential for apocalyptic escalation is such that no country has deployed them since then. There are nine nuclear-armed countries in the world.
Trump's approach to Iran has been increasingly erratic over the past week, alternating between optimism that a deal with the Islamic Republic was on the horizon and extreme threats of violence.
On Sunday, in an expletive-laden Truth Social rant, he told the "crazy bastards" in Iran to open the "fuckin' strait" of Hormuz or face "hell".
Then on Tuesday, the last day of his announced deadline for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, he went further and threatened Iran's annihilation.
"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will," Trump posted on his Truth Social network.
"We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World."
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