Barack Obama handed Iran billions of dollars and called it a nuclear deal.
Now Trump just obliterated the facilities Obama's deal let Tehran build for a decade.
NBC put the interview on air anyway – and handed Trump the best clip of the week.
The Interview NBC Tried to Redirect Three Times
Kristen Welker had a plan for Sunday's Meet the Press interview with Trump in Wisconsin.
She was going to pin him down on Iran.
She was going to get him on camera saying he broke his "no new wars" promise.
It did not go the way she planned.
Trump went straight at Obama before she could frame the narrative.
"Obama signed that stupid deal where he paid them billions and billions of dollars," Trump told her. "He thought he could bribe them."
Welker pushed back – the standard line – arguing Iran moved closest to weapons-grade uranium after Trump withdrew from the 2015 agreement.
Trump cut her off.
"They were developing it during the nuclear deal. You don't know that?"
What Obama's Deal Actually Did
Here is what Welker did not tell her viewers.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action unlocked access to roughly $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets – including over $50 billion in liquid cash, by the Obama administration's own accounting to Congress.
Separately, Obama sent $400 million to Tehran in cash, on pallets, flown in on cargo planes – the initial payment in a $1.7 billion settlement the administration announced the same day the deal took effect.
The deal let Iran keep 6,000 centrifuges spinning.
It capped enrichment at 3.67 percent – but those caps expired after ten years.
Obama himself admitted in a 2015 NPR interview that by year 13 or 14, Iran's breakout time to a nuclear weapon would shrink "almost down to zero."
https://twitter.com/FoxNews_Flash/status/2063666198110519708?s=20
He said that. On record. Before the deal was signed.
Then the Obama White House signed it anyway.
The moment Trump pulled out in 2018, Iran stopped pretending.
Tehran blew past the enrichment caps, deployed advanced centrifuges, and by June 2025 had stockpiled uranium enriched to 60 percent – one step below weapons-grade.
What Seven B-2s Fixed in 25 Minutes
Trump told Welker what happened next.
"If I didn't go in there with the B-2 bombers, they would right now have a nuclear weapon, and it could be that half of the world would be eradicated."
On June 22, 2025, Operation Midnight Hammer sent seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers across the Pacific.
They dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker busters – bombs specifically designed to punch through the mountain that Iran buried Fordow inside.
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine confirmed it afterward: all three sites – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – sustained "extremely severe damage and destruction."
The IAEA confirmed the facilities "suffered enormous damage."
Trump told Welker it was consistent with America First.
"I'm doing the world a service, but I'm doing our country a service. It's America First."
The Promise He Never Actually Made
Welker pressed Trump on whether he broke a campaign promise against new wars.
https://twitter.com/kwelkernbc/status/2063604640877355093?s=20
Trump's answer was cleaner than his critics expected.
"First of all, I didn't guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?"
He rejected the Vietnam and Iraq comparisons directly.
"This is not an endless war. We've been doing this for three months. Much of it has been under the form a pretty good form of ceasefire."
Think about what that means.
Obama spent eight years, billions of dollars, and the full diplomatic weight of six world powers trying to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon through negotiation.
Trump spent 25 minutes and sent in the Air Force.
One of those approaches required a mountain-penetrating bomb.
The other required a runway full of pallets loaded with cash.
Obama chose the pallets.
Trump chose the bombers.
The interview ended when Welker kept pushing on election fraud claims and California's vote count.
Trump had had enough.
"You're a one-sided crooked network," he told her. "Sorry. Let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time."
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Trump rips Obama's 'stupid' Iran deal, claims former president thought 'he could bribe them,'" Fox News, June 7, 2026.
- Greg Norman-Diamond, "US strike damage to Iran's Natanz, Isfahan nuclear facilities captured in satellite images," Fox News, June 23, 2025.
- "U.S. Strikes on Nuclear Sites in Iran," Congressional Research Service, June 2025.
- Mark Dubowitz, "The Dangers of Ransom Payments to Iran," House Financial Services Committee testimony, September 8, 2016.
- "Obama's Legacy, a Nuclear Iran?" Middle East Forum, 2017.