US President Trump announced on Saturday that the United States had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, including the mountainside Fordow site.
“We have completed our very successful strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Donald Trump announced that the US had carried out “successful” strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities.
US President Trump: “We have dropped a full-scale bomb on the Fordow nuclear site (in Iran)”
“All aircraft are now out of Iranian airspace. A full BOMB load has been dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All aircraft are safely on their way home,” Trump added. “Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is no other army in the world that can do this. IT IS TIME FOR PEACE!” he said.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military had directly joined Israel’s effort to dismantle the country’s nuclear program by striking three facilities in Iran, a risky gamble to weaken a longtime foe amid threats of retaliation from Tehran that could trigger a wider regional conflict.
President Donald Trump said Saturday that the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel ‘s effort to decapitate the country’s nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran’s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.
The decision to directly involve the U.S. comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country’s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. But U.S. and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and a 30,000-lb. bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily-fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground.
“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 social media. “All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.”
Trump said B-2 stealth bombers were used but did not specify which types of bombs were dropped. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation.
The strikes are a perilous decision for the U.S. as Iran has pledged to retaliate if it joined the Israeli assault, and for Trump personally, having won the White House on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism.
Trump told reporters on Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran. He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks, a timeline that seemed drawn out as the situation was evolving quickly.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday the United States that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will “result in irreparable damage for them.” And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.”
Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country’s leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.
Israel ‘s military said Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war, while Iran’s foreign minister warned before the U.S. attack that American military involvement “would be very, very dangerous for everyone.”
The prospect of a wider war threatened, too. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they would resume attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joins Israel’s military campaign. The Houthis paused such attacks in May under a deal with the U.S.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel announced the U.S. had begun “assisted departure flights,” the first from Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.
But Trump appears to have made the calculation — at the prodding of Israeli officials and many Republican lawmakers — that Israel’s operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps permanently.
The Israelis say their offensive has already crippled Iran’s air defenses, allowing them to already significantly degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites.
But to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, Israel has appealed to Trump for U.S. bunker-busting bombs, the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode. The penetrator is currently only delivered by the B-2 stealth bomber, which is only found in the American arsenal.
The bomb carries a conventional warhead, and is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, raising the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility.
Previous Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site, Natanz, on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area, the IAEA has said.
Trump’s decision for direct U.S. military intervention comes after his administration made an unsuccessful two-month push — including with high-level, direct negotiations with the Iranians — aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear program.
