Brigadier General Mohammad Akrami-Nia, speaking on behalf of the Iranian Army, said the country's air defence network had grown stronger than it stood both before and during the war, with his remarks coming as tensions between Iran and the United States remain elevated and the prospect of renewed strikes against Tehran continues to be raised by President Donald Trump.
Akrami-Nia told a news outlet that Iran's air defence capabilities had grown beyond both pre-conflict and wartime levels — a position at odds with assertions Trump had put forward on multiple occasions — with that statement arriving on the same Thursday that Trump indicated he would not deploy nuclear weapons against Iran and expressed little inclination toward committing ground forces, even as the US military continued to assess additional strike options targeting Iranian energy and nuclear infrastructure.
Speaking with a television news outlet, Trump described the weapon under discussion as a conventional explosive and indicated that nuclear arms were not necessary for the United States to accomplish its goals in relation to Iran, noting that the device in question carried no nuclear capability. Trump stated that nuclear weapons would not be an option he would pursue. "That isn't something we need to do," Trump said.
When a reporter put the question of deploying ground troops in Iran to Trump, he indicated that he did not foresee that happening.
A broadcast outlet reported that orders went out to military planners to develop a broader set of strike options, with the list of potential targets said to encompass Iranian energy facilities and nuclear sites — among them the underground installation at Pickaxe Mountain — alongside consideration of deploying the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, commonly referred to as the MOAB. Doubts have been raised among those with knowledge of the planning about how well the MOAB would perform against installations buried at depth.
Tipping the scales at around 21,600 pounds, the weapon holds the distinction of being the largest conventional — non-nuclear — munition in the US military's inventory, yet its design leaves it without the capability to penetrate and destroy targets situated deep below ground. Trump also laid out his position on barring Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, pointing to earlier US strikes that he said had set back Iranian nuclear facilities.
In a separate action, the Treasury Department placed asset restrictions on 26 people and organisations — 16 individuals alongside 10 entities — over their alleged roles in sustaining Iran's financial infrastructure, including informal banking arrangements and funding pipelines that feed its armed forces and allied armed factions across the region. Financial institutions, currency dealers, and money-transfer networks thought to have facilitated the evasion of international sanctions and the cross-border movement of funds now fall within the scope of the newly announced measures, which form part of a wider effort by US authorities to restrict Iran's access to global financial systems.
