Donald Trump stunned the world by launching a massive military strike intended to terminate Iran’s quest for a doomsday nuclear weapon.
Trump ordered the devastating attack on Saturday as six B-2 stealth bombers dropped a dozen 30,000-pound ‘bunker buster’ bombs on Iran’s primary nuclear facility.
‘The strikes were a spectacular military success,’ Trump said in a late-night address to the nation from the White House.
Trump claimed the top secret uranium enrichment base hidden deep inside a mountain at Fordow, 80 miles south of Tehran, was flattened.
U.S. submarines also fired 30 Tomahawk missiles and wiped out two other Iranian nuclear sites at Natanz and Isfahan.
Iran’s foreign minister condemned the offensive as ‘extremely dangerous, lawless and criminal behavior.’
‘The events this morning are outrageous and will have everlasting consequences,’ Seyed Abbas Araghchi said. ‘Iran reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interest, and people.’
By Sunday morning, Israel was being struck by a barrage of missiles as Iran launched a retaliatory attack.
A rescue worker could be seen helping children in Haifa and buildings in Tel Aviv suffered significant damage as a number of people were reported wounded.
The dramatic series of events caught everyone off guard when Trump acted swiftly after meeting with his national security council at the White House.
Just 48 hours earlier, the president had said he would decide ‘within two weeks’ whether to send in U.S. bombers to help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
After that statement the world let out the breath it had been collectively holding, and it seemed the immediate prospect of a strike had receded.
Trump’s own MAGA movement had been tearing itself apart over the prospect of another Middle East war, and the president himself suggested there was still a chance for a diplomatic solution.
But all that changed very quickly as Trump became convinced that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would never voluntarily give up his quest for a nuclear bomb.
On Friday afternoon, Trump flew on Air Force One to a fundraising event at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Already, his mind appeared to be firming up and, speaking on the runway, he described two weeks as a ‘maximum’ deadline.
He was in constant communication with his advisers and came to rely on the judgment of four key people – Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and perhaps most crucially, Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the man Trump credits with annihilating ISIS in his first term.
Ratcliffe and Caine, in particular, were briefing Trump on the intelligence of how close Iran was to getting a nuclear bomb – a matter of weeks – and the chances of military success if the commander in chief ordered a strike.
Officials have suggested that, even when Trump gave Iran two weeks, it was more in hope than belief that they wanted to talk.
Factors that increased the sense of urgency in recent days included Israeli intelligence that its bombing campaign had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a matter of months.
However, even as the need for a U.S. intervention became increasingly inevitable, Trump had several other concerns.
One was the brewing MAGA civil war, with some of his own most loyal supporters loudly reminding him that ‘America First’ meant not getting involved in wars.
Trump took steps to prepare the ground with his base, speaking personally to Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, who had both forcefully expressed their opposition to strikes.
The president also had concerns about turning Iran into ‘another Libya’ after that country was thrown into chaos following the U.S. and NATO’s bombing campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi.
And there was the practical danger of launching a mission that failed to take out Fordow, which would leave Trump looking weak.
It had been widely speculated that two 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs – so-called ‘bunker busters’ – would be enough to destroy Fordow, an assessment backed by Israel..
But the bombs had never been tested in combat.
If they failed, the embarrassment would not be Israel’s, it would be Trump’s.
The military, through Caine, was able to give Trump a better option, hugely increasing the number of bunker busters used.
Another factor pushing Trump to give the green light sooner rather than later was the weather – it was a waning moon in Iran, giving cover for the B-2 bombers that would carry the bunker busters from a base in Missouri.
As Saturday dawned at his golf club in Bedminster, New jersey Trump and his officials went uncharacteristically dark.
Their social media posts were few and far between, and the president avoided his usual habit of speaking to groups of reporters.
Behind the scenes, the signals from Tehran were not positive.
Trump’s officials were telling him that, whatever the Iranians said, they didn’t really want to talk.
Bannon suggested cryptically that he was ‘hearing from pretty good sources’ that ‘the party is on.’
In an attempt to placate Iran, U.S. officials reportedly contacted the regime on Saturday.
The message was that, should U.S. strikes on the nuclear sites happen, they would not be followed by an attempt at regime change.
At 4.30pm Trump helicoptered from Bedminster to Morristown Municipal Airport.
He waved and said ‘Thank you’ to the press but kept walking across the tarmac to Air Force One.
Trump did not interact with the press on the plane, or when he landed at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington.
His Marine One helicopter landed on the South Lawn of the White House at 6:01pm
Trump emerged and gestured to the newly installed American flag, gave a thumbs up and a fist-pump, but said nothing.
Two minutes later, he entered the White House and walked to the West Wing.
His silence led to increasingly fevered speculation that he had made up his mind to strike.
After reaching the West Wing he went to the Situation Room where his key team – including the four who had emerged as his top tier advisers on Iran – was waiting.
Also there, were his chief of staff Susie Wiles, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Vance sat to Trump’s right, and Rubio to his left.
Israel was contacted to give a heads up that the attack was coming.
Trump decided to take one of the strongest options available to him, not just flattening Fordow.
He also gave the green light for 30 Tomahawk missiles to be fired from U.S. submarines to destroy other nuclear sites at Natanz and Isfahan.
The submarines struck from 400 miles away.
After reports came back to the Situation room that the mission had been a success, Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him. He also called Fox News host Sean Hannity.
He then announced the results on Truth Social and prepared a short address to the nation, which would last less than four minutes.
It included special recognition for the role of his top general, Caine.
For Trump, the military success of the operation will have come as a great relief, but he has also been briefed by Caine and Ratcliffe on what could happen next.
That could include Iranian drone attacks on the 40,000 U.S. military personnel in the Middle East, or Tehran could activate sleeper cells in America.
Trump made sure to warn Iran that, if it does, the consequences will be even worse.
The words he chose to emphasize on Truth Social were: ‘NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!’
Given the mountainous nature of Fordow, it may be some time before before the full impact of the strikes is known.
But Netanyahu congratulated Trump on his ‘bold decision.’
He said: ‘History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime, the world’s most dangerous weapons.’
Members of Trump’s MAGA base lauded the president.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said: ‘The President’s decisive action prevents the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, which chants “Death to America,” from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet.’
But one House Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said: ‘This is not Constitutional.’
And Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: ‘He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations.’
