by Met Middleson

June 19, 2025

A White House reporter on Tuesday asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to clarify President Trump’s recent claim that Iran is “just weeks away” from a nuclear weapon, prompting a direct and urgent response.

“Can you clarify when the president said a few weeks away, did he mean obtaining enough enriched uranium to start building a weapon or did he mean Iran is a few weeks away from completing the production of a weapon?”

Leavitt responded by asserting that Iran already has everything it needs and that only a political decision stands in the way of full nuclear capability.

“Let’s be very clear. Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon,” she said. “All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to do that, and it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon.”

She added that the media had failed to represent the situation accurately in its reporting.

“It’s an important question, and it’s one, frankly, the media has been getting wrong,” Leavitt said.

The confusion may stem from conflicting assessments within the U.S. and international intelligence community. In a public hearing earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon and that there is no evidence Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made a decision to pursue one. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency stated, “We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.” Meanwhile, officials have warned that Iran could produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of weeks if it made the decision to do so.

By placing the threshold for nuclear escalation solely on a future decision by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Leavitt’s comments shift public focus directly onto Ayatollah Khamenei. That framing comes as several U.S. lawmakers and former officials have publicly suggested that the only way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is through regime change. President Trump has not formally endorsed regime change, but has stated repeatedly that Iran’s leadership is the source of instability in the region, and has made direct threats toward the Supreme Leader, including a Truth Social post this week that read, “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”