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Tucker Says Trump Could Nuke Iran. What Happens After?

What This One's About

Last night Tucker Carlson posted that the Trump administration may be within days of a nuclear strike on Iran, not a bombing run, a nuke, on a place called Pickaxe Mountain, and that Trump could decide by Saturday, November 7. Tens of thousands of likes in two hours.

So I did what I always do. I sat down with it and checked it line by line. Some of it is solid. Some of it I can't find anywhere else. And the biggest claim in the whole thing rests on one guy nobody's named.

Then I went further than a fact-check, because whether it happens Saturday or not, you deserve to know what actually happens the day after a nuke goes off in Iran, over there, around the world, and at your house.

/Chapters(25)

Each timestamp opens the video at that point on YouTube.

  1. 0:00Tucker's post: a nuke on Iran within days
  2. 0:38I checked it line by line
  3. 1:19What checks out: Pickaxe Mountain is real, and Trump has named it
  4. 1:59The Pentagon's "more options" review, and Netanyahu's 53 seats
  5. 2:32The fine print: "an informed observer", and that's it
  6. 3:07Where Tucker's coming from: the 25th Amendment interview
  7. 3:43My read
  8. 3:57Can a nuke even reach it? The B61-11 and 230 feet
  9. 4:41What people get wrong about bunker busters
  10. 5:20Where the fallout goes: the Pentagon-software simulation
  11. 6:12Iran's answer: "no geographic limit"
  12. 6:40Hormuz is already a shooting gallery: 113 ships
  13. 7:01The 81-year streak ends
  14. 7:23Russia: not a war for Iran, a permission slip
  15. 8:14China: Beijing's gas tank
  16. 8:58Pakistan: the one everybody forgets, and it's downwind
  17. 9:49North Korea already told us what it thinks
  18. 10:16The last domino: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the NPT
  19. 10:52One decision, one person
  20. 11:18Bring it home: fuel
  21. 11:51Food: the slow one
  22. 12:22The stuff that can actually reach you: cyber
  23. 13:10What to actually do (don't run out and buy potassium iodide)
  24. 13:38Boring, and it works
  25. 14:14Would Trump do it, or is Tucker selling fear?

/Sources & Receipts(32)

Everything cited in the video, so you can read it yourself instead of taking my word for it.

The claim

What checks out

What doesn't

Can a nuke even reach it

The day after

At your house

Where I'm Coming From

ONE THING I DIDN'T HAVE ON CAMERA: On October 16, Trump told Newsmax, on the record: "I wouldn't use nuclear. We don't have to." (Reuters link below.) That's two weeks before Tucker's post. It doesn't make the rest of this video less important, the Pentagon review, the B61-11, the fallout modeling, and what every other nuclear power does next are all still real, but it's the single strongest piece of evidence against the headline claim, and you should have it.

"My read" sections are my opinion. The casualty numbers are from a UCS simulation of a 1.2-megaton weapon on Esfahan, far bigger than anything we'd likely use, and I say so in the video. I can't verify Tucker's anonymous sourcing, the Abu Dhabi trip, the Obama meeting, or the Russia warning, and neither can anyone else so far.

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