FACT FOCUS: False claims Trump made as he addressed the nation about Iran

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump mischaracterized core elements of the U.S. economy and stretched the facts in claiming to have toppled Iran’s government as he addressed the nation Wednesday night in a time of soaring gas prices and persistent inflation.

Here's a look at some of his statements:

‘No inflation’

CLAIM: “We were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far, with no inflation.’’

THE FACTS: This is a standard Trump claim. But the economy he inherited was far from weak. In 2024, the last year of Joe Biden's presidency, American gross domestic product grew 2.8%, adjusted for inflation, faster than any wealthy country in the world except Spain. It also expanded at a healthy rate from 2021 through 2023. Last year, in fact, U.S. economic growth decelerated under Trump to a still-respectable 2.1%, partly because the 43-day federal government shutdown slashed growth from October through December.

Nor has inflation vanished. The Labor Department’s consumer price index was up 2.4% in February compared with a year earlier. It’s still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

‘Regime change’

CLAIM: “Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They’re all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.”

THE FACTS: Trump's depiction of the people now in charge in Iran, after scores of senior leaders were killed in the war, stretches credulity.

Israel’s airstrike at the start of the war Feb. 28 killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran then installed his son, Mojtaba, who is viewed as even more hard-line, as supreme leader. The monthlong war has seen Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard grow even more ascendant. Iran's civilian leadership — broadly untouched by the war -- acknowledges it has little command and control over the Guard's actions.

Both Trump and Israel have signaled they would tell the Iranian people to rise up at a point in the war to take back their government. That hasn’t happened.

Protester deaths

CLAIM: “This murderous regime also recently killed 45,000 of their own people who were protesting in Iran.”

THE FACTS: A death toll that high has not been verified.

The U.S.-based group Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of demonstrations in Iran, said it confirmed the deaths of just over 7,000 people in the nationwide protests that reached their apex in January. However, it said thousands more may have been killed, though internet and communication restrictions in Iran since have made verifying the reports incredibly difficult. It put total arrests at more than 53,000.

Iran’s government, which long has played down death tolls in other unrest, offered its only toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed.

Trump previously said that at least 32,000 people were killed in January protests, which is at the far end of estimates offered by activists for the death toll. He offered no evidence to support those figures.

This is how the AP reports on the death toll from Iran’s protests.

Middle East oil

CLAIM: “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil.’’

THE FACTS: It’s true that the United States is by far the world’s leading producer of oil and relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction (8.5% in 2025) of the oil it imports. But, as is obvious at U.S. gas pumps, that doesn’t mean it is unaffected by the turmoil in the Middle East.

Oil is a commodity, “the price of which is set in a global market,’’ University of Chicago energy analyst Sam Ori said before Trump’s speech, “and a disruption anywhere affects the price everywhere.’’ Which is why the price of benchmark U.S. crude oil is up more than 50% since the Iran war began, and the average price of U.S. gallon of gasoline cracked $4 a gallon this week.

Inflated investments

CLAIM: Trump cited “record-setting setting investments coming into the United States, over $18 trillion.”

THE FACTS: Trump has presented no evidence that he’s secured this much domestic or foreign investment in the U.S. Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House’s own website, that figure appears to be exaggerated, highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $10.5 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.

A study published in January raised doubts about whether more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by many of America’s biggest trading partners will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

Cash to Iran

CLAIM: “Obama gave them $1.7 billion in cash.”

THE FACTS: This misleading claim that President Barack Obama handed over cash to the Iranians dates back to Trump’s first term and persists in his second.

The U.S. treasury did pay Iran roughly that amount under Obama. But it was not a gift. Rather, it was money owed to the Iranians since the 1970s, when they paid the U.S. $400 million for military equipment that was never delivered because the government was overthrown and diplomatic relations ruptured.

After the 2015 deal to restrain Iran’s nuclear development, the U.S. and Iran announced they had settled the matter, with the U.S. agreeing to pay the $400 million principal in cash, along with about $1.3 billion in interest. Trump later took the U.S. out of the deal.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.