President Donald Trump privately lashed out at Vice President JD Vance after the 2025 U.S. strike on Iran, demanding that administration officials repeat his description of the operation's success, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
The account, detailed in "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" and excerpted by Politico ahead of its June 23 release, offers a rare glimpse into internal tensions within the Trump administration following Operation Midnight Hammer, the military campaign that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities. The revelations arrive as Vance has emerged as one of the administration's chief advocates for its Iran diplomacy efforts.
At the center of the dispute was a single word: "obliterated."
Following the June 2025 strikes, Trump declared in a televised address that "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated." The statement became a defining administration message as officials sought to portray the operation as a decisive blow against Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
Questions emerged almost immediately after media reports cited early intelligence assessments suggesting the damage may not have been as comprehensive as Trump's characterization implied. During an appearance on ABC's "This Week," host Jonathan Karl pressed Vance on whether the facilities had truly been destroyed.
Vance declined to fully embrace the president's wording.
"Well, Jon, severely damaged versus obliterated, I'm not exactly sure what the difference is," Vance said during the interview. "What we know is we set their nuclear program back substantially."
According to Haberman and Swan, Trump's reaction was swift and forceful. The authors report that the president complained to an associate that administration officials should use the exact language he had chosen.
"That's the word. Everyone just needs to copy what I say. Obliterated. Obliterated," Trump reportedly said, according to the book.
The episode underscores the importance Trump has long placed on message discipline and personal control over public narratives. Throughout both of his presidencies, advisers have frequently described a White House culture in which the president closely monitored how officials framed major policy decisions, particularly on national security matters.
The authors describe a second disagreement tied to the same military operation. According to the book, Vance expressed concerns about portions of a presidential speech following the strikes and suggested revisions to some of the language. The vice president, who built part of his political identity around skepticism of foreign military interventions after serving in the Iraq War, reportedly worried about the potential for broader escalation.
Haberman and Swan write that Trump responded sharply.
"I know what I'm doing," Trump told Vance, according to the account.
The authors further report that Trump ended the conversation abruptly and turned away from the vice president. The White House has vigorously disputed that characterization.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly defended the relationship between the two men and rejected suggestions of friction.
"Vice President Vance has always been an incredibly trusted and talented member of President Trump's national security team," Kelly said, highlighting Vance's role in negotiations that later produced a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending hostilities with Iran.
A senior White House official, speaking anonymously to Politico, challenged the book's reporting more broadly.
"You'd think they would have checked their sources before putting false claims like these on paper," the official said.
The dispute described in "Regime Change" has resurfaced at a politically sensitive moment. Vance now serves as one of the administration's most visible defenders of its Iran policy, regularly appearing in interviews and public forums to explain the White House's approach to Middle East diplomacy.
The publication has already attracted attention inside Washington because of its sourcing. Simon & Schuster says the book is based on hundreds of interviews and extensive reporting from inside the administration. According to Axios, some officials have privately expressed concern about the extent of internal discussions that appear to have reached the authors.
