President Donald Trump called Saturday’s strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear sites a ‘spectacular military success’ and gave a stark warning to Tehran that more attacks would be coming if the regime didn’t make peace.
Trump surprised the world a little before 8 p.m. Saturday by announcing on Truth Social that he had given the go-ahead to attack Iran, using six massive 30,000-pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles to destroy Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
The president’s decision to join Israel on a mission to wipe out the Islamic republic’s nuclear program comes nine days after Israel first attacked.
Shortly after 10 p.m., Trump addressed the nation in the White House’s Cross Hall, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
He spoke for less than four minutes.
‘Tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,’ Trump said. ‘Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.’
‘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,’ Trump warned.
The president opened his remarks by calling Iran the ‘world’s No. 1 state-sponsor of terror.’
‘For 40 years, Iran has been saying “death to America, death to Israel,”‘ Trump said. ‘They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty.’
He blamed the deaths of thousands on Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, who the U.S. assassinated under the direction of Trump at the Baghdad airport in January 2020.
‘It will not continue,’ Trump warned.
Trump thanked and congratulated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the president spoke to by phone after the U.S.’s bombing campaign, the Daily Mail confirmed.
‘We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before,’ Trump boasted. ‘And we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.’
The president then thanked the U.S.’s top military officials – saying that he hoped he would not have to order a strike on Iran again.
‘This cannot continue. There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,’ he warned.
‘Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill,’ the president said.
He warned that most Iranian targets can be taken out ‘in a matter of minutes.’
‘There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There’s never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago,’ Trump said.
Trump ended his brief remarks by thanking God.
‘I want to just say we love you God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America,’ Trump said.
As the president was speaking, the White House released a number of images of Trump and his top officials meeting Saturday in the Situation Room.
Trump was wearing a red Make America Great Again ballcap as Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine and CIA Director John Ratcliffe gathered around him.
The president’s address came after he announced the attacks on Iran using his Truth Social network, a little before 8 p.m. Saturday.
‘We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,’ the president said.
‘All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,’ he continued. ‘All planes are safely on their way home.’
‘Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this,’ Trump said. ‘NOW IS HE TIME FOR PEACE!’
‘Thank you for your attention to this matter,’ he added.
Netanyahu applauded Trump in his own remarks, made early Sunday morning.
‘Congratulations, President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,’ the Israeli leader said.
Israel Defense Forces said before 8 a.m. Sunday that Iran had fired its first wave of missiles toward Israel since the U.S. attack, CNN reported.
A Fox News correspondent reported hearing large explosions over the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei had yet to deliver a response, with The New York Times reporting that he’d been taken to a bunker – to avoid any assassination threats.
Iran’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, said that the U.S. strikes breached international law.
‘The United States, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, has committed a grave violation of the UN Charter, international law and the NPT by attacking Iran’s peaceful nuclear installations,’ he said.
‘The events this morning are outrageous and will have everlasting consequences,’ the foreign minister continued. ‘Each and every member of the UN must be alarmed over this extremely dangerous, lawless and criminal behavior.’
‘In accordance with the UN Charter and its provisions allowing a legitimate response in self-defense, Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people,’ he added.
Mehdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, downplayed on social media the impact the U.S. strikes had on Iran’s nuclear program.
He said of Fordo: ‘The site had been evacuated a long time ago and the damagres are not irreversible,’ adding, ‘you cannot bomb knowledge.’
The decision could impact Trump politically, as he had pledged to his MAGA base on the campaign trail that he would end U.S.’s involvement in ‘forever wars’ and prevent ‘World War III’ from happening on his watch.
Top Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, cheered Trump’s call to make the strikes, with House Speaker Mike Johnson calling it a ‘decisive action.’
‘President Trump has been consistent and clear that a nuclear-armed Iran will not be tolerated. That posture has now been enforced with strength, precision, and clarity,’ Johnson said.
The president revealed to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the U.S. military used six massive 30,000-pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs on Iran’s Fordow nuclear site.
The other two nuclear sites were targeted with 30 Tomahawk missiles launched from submarines 400 miles away.
Additionally, The New York Times reported that the B-2 stealth bombers used in the attack flew non-stop for about 37 hours from their base in Missouri and were refueled several times in the air.
U.S. military personnel were warned after the American strike that the Iranians could retaliate on troops stationed in the region.
There are approximately 40,000 American troops stationed in the Middle East.
The country’s largest military base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, is located outside Doha in Qatar.
Trump addressed the troops at that base when he visited the Middle East last month.
There are also concerns that Iran could use their affiliates in the Middle East, or terror cells, to launch attacks.
The Iranian-backed Houthis, based out of Yemen, had previously warned that they would attack U.S. ships in the Red Sea if Trump greenlit an attack on the Iranian homeland.
Other Iranian-backed groups, including Hezbollah, operating out of Lebanon, and Hamas, out of Gaza, have been weakened by Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terror attack.
Prior to the Truth Social post, the president hasn’t shown his hand, walking into the White House Saturday evening without speaking to reporters around 6 p.m.
The White House even called a ‘lid’ – which is when the press pool, which tracks the president’s movements, is dismissed for the day.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the president was giving himself two weeks to decide whether or not to attack Iran, with diplomatic options seemingly still on the table.
The Europeans had met with the Iranians on Friday in Geneva, Switzerland, but Trump dismissed those talks.
‘Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help them,’ Trump said after landing in New Jersey on Friday.
A round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks scheduled last Sunday to take place in Oman had been canceled once Israel’s siege began.
Israel’s bombing campaign had started on Thursday, June 12, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyanu warning that Iran was coming too close to making a nuclear bomb.
Trump joined in on that assessment Friday, telling reporters as he landed in Morristown, New Jersey that ‘it looked like I’m right about the material they’ve gathered already.’
‘It is a tremendous amount of material and I think within a matter of weeks or certainly within a matter of months they will be able to have a nuclear weapon and we can’t let that happen,’ Trump said.
He smacked down an assessment made by his Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard – a former Democrat – when she testified before Congress in March.
Gabbard had told lawmakers that the U.S. intelligence community ‘continues to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.’
She also said that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ‘not authorized a nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.’
Trump told reporters when asked about Gabbard’s statement: ‘Well, then my intelligence community is wrong.’
Gabbard has since clarified her comments.
‘The dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division,’ she posted to X on Friday. ‘America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.’
‘President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree,’ she said.
Gabbard wasn’t pictured in any photos the White House released from the Situation Room Saturday.
Semafor reported that Gabbard had been in the crucial meeting.
