Washington President Donald Trump said Saturday the U.S. military has carried out a “very successful attack” on three Iranian nuclear sites, including the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordo.
American bombers struck Iran’s three main nuclear sites and threatened more attacks if Tehran doesn’t capitulate, pulling the U.S. directly into the country’s conflict despite his longtime promises to avoid new wars.
Addressing the nation in a televised speech, Trump said Iran’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” He threatened “far greater” attacks if Iran doesn’t now make peace, raising the specter of even deeper U.S. involvement.
Trump had said earlier in a social media post that a “payload of BOMBS” was dropped on Fordo, the uranium-enrichment site buried deep under a mountain and seen as vulnerable only to “bunker buster” munitions that the U.S. possesses. Natanz and Isfahan, two other sites, were also struck.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Trump said. “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater — and a lot easier.”
The U.S. strikes involved submarines launching Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers dropping 14 bunker-buster bombs, the Pentagon said Sunday in the first public accounting of the operation.
The operation — dubbed “Midnight Hammer” — saw the U.S. deploy B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference. He said there are no reports of U.S. forces coming under fire.
We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow, he said, using an alternative spelling for the nuclear site, adding that the planes were safely out of Iranian airspace and on the way home.
According to Caine, B-2 bombers took off early Saturday U.S. time and later dropped the bunker busters, or the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, which had never before been used in combat.
Another group of the planes went west — and whose flight was widely reported and picked up by flight-tracker data — were decoys meant to maintain tactical surprise, he said.
“This is a plan that took months and weeks of positioning and preparation, so that we could be ready when the president of the United States called,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “It took a great deal of precision. It involved misdirection and the highest of operational security.”
The officials said 75 precision-guided weapons were used and the operation involved some 125 aircraft. Caine said the battle damage would take time to assess but “all three sites sustain extremely severe damage and destruction.”
The flights to deliver the targets amounted to the second-longest flights in the B-2’s operational history, according to Hegseth. The longest was a 40-hour round trip in October 2001 in the initial phase of the Afghanistan war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the U.S. strikes were “outrageous and will have everlasting consequences.”
“Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people,” he said.
Tehran’s nuclear regulatory agency said there was no sign of radiation contamination at the sites and that it had taken precautions in anticipation of an attack.
Nonetheless, the move marks an extraordinary escalation by the president in the week since Israel began airstrikes across Iran and amounts to the most serious foreign-policy decision of his presidency so far.
It goes against the advice of U.S. allies in Europe as well as the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has repeatedly warned that nuclear facilities must never be attacked given the potential threat to nuclear safety — not to mention radiation leaks.
Iran has said it doesn’t want a nuclear bomb, and Trump’s own intelligence agencies had assessed recently it still hadn’t committed to developing such a weapon. Trump, however, had dismissed those findings and had declined to rule out joining the Israeli strikes, which had also killed several prominent Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists.
The U.S. strikes could immediately open American assets in the Middle East to attack since Iran had warned it would retaliate if Trump ordered an attack. Trump’s combative language in the last couple of days had also triggered new threats from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and led Iranian officials to call the U.S. Israel’s “partner in crime.”
Iran’s retaliation could also come in the form of cyberattacks against American or Israeli interests by hackers linked to the regime in Tehran.
It’s also possible that Tehran opts to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, according to Ali Vaez, the director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project and a longtime analyst of the country’s atomic program. The NPT is the bedrock arms-control agreement that compels signatories to accept inspections from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran left, the world would get even less information about what remains of its atomic sites.
The U.S. reached out to Iran diplomatically on Saturday to say the strikes are all the U.S. plans and it does not aim for regime change, CBS News reported.
“I hope that the Iranians are measured in their response but there will be a response — this is an act of war by the United States against a foreign country, which has not attacked us lately,” said Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center. “Americans are at risk all over the Middle East, all over the world.”
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that authorities in Isfahan confirmed multiple simultaneous explosions in Natanz and Isfahan early Sunday, describing them as “aggressions” near the two nuclear facilities.
Iranian media quoted Iran’s nuclear body as saying there were no signs of contamination after the attacks, and no danger to residents living nearby. Hassan Abedini, deputy political head of Iran’s state broadcaster, said Iran had evacuated the three sites some time ago.
“The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centers and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots,” he said.
Israel was notified in advance of the strikes, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the strikes, a senior White House official said.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba told reporters Sunday afternoon that Japan was “monitoring the situation with great concern.”
Ishiba, who on June 13 delivered unusually tough remarks condemning Israel’s initial surprise attacks on Iran as “absolutely unacceptable,” appeared to take a softer line following Trump’s decision to strike.
“I believe that the most important priority is to stabilize the situation as soon as possible,” he said. “At the same time, Iran’s nuclear weapons development must be addressed.”
Fears of an impending strike had eased after Trump’s team said Thursday he would make a decision within two weeks. On Friday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the U.K. had met with Iranian officials in Geneva in a bid to prevent a U.S. attack.
For days, Trump had faced conflicting advice from his supporters, after he campaigned for president on promises to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars, pointing to American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. MAGA allies including longtime Trump supporter Steve Bannon, have warned against any U.S. intervention, insisting this is Israel’s fight to finish.
Other Republicans had been urging Trump to join the fight against Iran, arguing that Tehran was more vulnerable after days of airstrikes by Israel, and there was an opportunity to deliver on the president’s long insistence the regime cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
Trump and his advisers had suggested in recent days that any strike would be limited. Trump briefed Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson, according to people familiar with the matter.
“This is not the start of a forever war,” Sen. Jim Risch, the Idaho Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on X. “There will not be American boots on the ground in Iran. This was a precise, limited strike, which was necessary and by all accounts was very successful.”
Energy experts have raised concerns that crude flows in the region could be imperiled if Iran and its proxies retaliate in response to a U.S. attack. Fears have focused on the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf that is a key transit point for 26% of the world’s oil trade. Houthis have previously disrupted Red Sea shipping, with attacks on ships in the Bab el Mandeb strait forcing vessels to reroute around Africa.
A broader attack — including potentially planting naval mines — on the Strait of Hormuz could have even wider consequences, since it’s such a vital artery for the region’s oil and gas output.
U.S. ally Israel had launched a surprise attack on Iran on June 13, saying the imminent threat of the regime in Tehran securing nuclear weapons had to be neutralized. Iran’s military infrastructure was seriously damaged and a number of its top generals and atomic scientists were killed. But Israel lacked the heavy bombs and B-2 stealth jets believed to be required to destroy nuclear sites buried deep underground.
Tehran had responded to Israel’s strikes by firing waves of ballistic missiles and drones, breaching aerial defenses, striking several cities and causing unprecedented damage. But the number of projectiles launched by Iran dropped markedly after the first few days of the conflict, raising questions about the number of missiles left in its arsenal and its ability to launch them.
“Iran is going to be facing a real dilemma, because they’ve already been dramatically weakened,” said Dennis Ross, who served as President Bill Clinton’s Middle East envoy and is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “They will try to do something to show they didn’t just capitulate or submit, but they have their own interest in trying to limit this.”
Iran’s ability to react may be limited by its economic weakness, with inflation running at around 40%. It is also largely isolated internationally. While allies such as Russia and China condemned Israel’s strikes and warned against U.S. intervention, they’ve offered little concrete support to Tehran.
