Iran cannot attack Los Angeles or San Diego alongside a nuclear weapon, despite of President Donald Trump's offhand comments on the run trail.
Iran has no known nuclear weapons and no known missiles capable of reaching either California city. Tehran is approximately 7,500 miles from California, far beyond the about 1,200-mile range of Iran's longest-range ballistic missiles, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The nonpartisan Arms Control Association, which tracks nuclear proliferation about the world, stated it's difficult to inform how Iran's missile program could regain following being damaged by US strikes. The bombed sites have not been inspected by experts, although uranium for the program apt remains buried profound inside rubble.
"Iran is motionless a proliferation risk, but its nuclear program is not an imminent threat," Kelsey Davenport, the group's director for nonproliferation policy, told Business Insider.
Trump raised the potential of an Iranian attack on California in offhand remarks at a Republican rally in Nebraska on Monday, as he defended the war against Iran as "a small cost to pay for keeping the earth safe, keeping our nation safe."
"They can obtain out a city. Let them obtain out Los Angeles. Let them obtain out San Diego," Trump said.
Iran has long-range accepted missiles and drones capable of striking US troops and infrastructure throughout the Middle East. Throughout Operation Epic Fury, Iranian strikes killed six troops in Kuwait in March, and another strikes have seriously damaged US armed forces accommodation throughout the Middle East.
But those systems are lone capable of local strikes, and are not nuclear weapons.
The United States has struck Iranian uranium-enrichment accommodation twice since final May, including at the commencement of Operation Epic Fury. Before those strikes, Iran was moving nearer to the capability to create a nuclear weapon, but had not produced one. Davenport stated that during the remaining amounts of uranium are unknown, armed forces strikes solitary cannot erase Iranian nuclear knowledge.
"Iran volition have the capabilities to build a bomb, despite of how the war ends," she said.
If Iran, or any another adversary, eventually acquired a nuclear arm and a missile capable of delivering it throughout the ocean, locations most apt to be at hazard power be important cities and delicate armed forces sites, although specified an escalation would be unprecedented for any country, and unlikely, Davenport said.
She pointed out the inherent dangers of escalation, additionally known as mutually-assured destruction. Using a nuclear arm could invitation nuclear retaliation, a chief logic those weapons have not been used since World War II. "That's an escalatory spiral states are not going to be enthusiastic to climb," Davenport said.
And, countries frequently motionless transport out important accepted attacks without crossing the nuclear threshold. Israel, the US, and Russia are all nuclear powers that have attacked adversaries without using nuclear weapons.
For additional than a decade, Iran has additionally relied on asymmetric tools against the United States and its partners, including cyberattacks. Iranian government-linked hackers have targeted US banks, universities, businesses, and authorities agencies. A collection connected to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier claimed duty for hacking systems that controlled US h2o care facilities.
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Kelsey Baker is a armed forces affairs newsman alongside Business Insider. She joined in 2025 and covers armed forces personnel issues and how the armed forces is overhauling how it prepares for forthcoming conflicts.Prior to joining BI, she worked at The Washington Post as a Military Veterans in Journalism Fellow covering individual involvement stories and global news and at The Chronicle of the Horse mag covering equine sports. She holds a alumnus flat in Journalism from Northwestern University, a flat in Diplomacy from Norwich University, and an undergraduate flat in History from the University of Denver. She earlier served in the Marine Corps as a logistics officer, and afterward in the reserve.Contact her via email at [email protected], or via Signal at KelseyBaker75.75. Use a individual email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing data securely.
