Key Points
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” President Donald Trump said Saturday.
The nuclear facilities were hit with massive bombs delivered from B-2 stealth bombers. U.S. Navy submarines also joined the attack, launching more than 30 Tomahawk missiles into Iran.
Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war against Iran sharply escalates the conflict and appears to push any diplomatic solution out of reach.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump said that the United States of America had engaged in an assault on Iranian nuclear websites, forcing Israel into warfare with its longtime rival and a nearby energy source. “A short time in the past, the U.S. Military finished big precision strikes on the three key nuclear centers inside the Iranian regime, Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan,” Trump said in a speech from the White House.
U.S. Navy submarines also released more than 30 Tomahawk missiles into Iran, two defense officers informed NBC News.
Israel and the United States, consistent with Trump, “labored as a group, like perhaps no team has ever labored before.” We’ve long gone a protracted manner to erasing this horrible chance” to the American best friend.
The president congratulated the U.S. Army on “an operation the likes of which the world has not longer visible in many, many a long time. Hopefully we can want their services on this ability now, not.”
“There could be both peace, or there may be tragedy for Iran far worse than we have witnessed during the last eight days. Remember, there are numerous goals left,” Trump said.
“Tonight turned into the toughest of them all by way of a ways, and perhaps the most deadly. But if peace does not come quickly, we can cross after the ones with different objectives with precision, velocity, and skill, maximum of them can be taken out in a rely of minutes,” he delivered.
Trump watched the moves unfold Saturday from the White House Situation Room, where he was joined by way of his countrywide protection crew and closest aides.
U.S. President Donald Trump holds a meeting alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 21, 2025.
The president, to start with, announced the strikes on social media Saturday, in which he wrote that “a complete payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.”
It changed into unclear past due Saturday precisely how much harm the U.S. Strikes had caused to the heavily fortified Iranian nuclear sites, or whether or not any American military property was still alive within the United States.
Earlier in the day, several U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers reportedly left Missouri, heading west over the Pacific Ocean. The big planes are a number of the most effective U.S. Aircraft able to carry the GBU-fifty seven Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 30,000-pound bomb referred to as the “bunker buster.”
The bunker buster bombs are widely considered the best traditional, non-nuclear weapons capable of causing serious harm to the Fordo nuclear facility, which is constructed into the side of a mountain in
Saturday’s motion puts america in direct armed conflict with Iran, a huge escalation in its involvement with Israel’s effort to cripple Tehran’s nuclear program and topple its regime.
A White House reputable informed NBC News that when the U.S. Moves, Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The decision to attack Iran once more engages the American army in lively conflict inside the Middle East — something Trump had vowed to avoid during his 2d term in office.
It additionally marks a chief shift from simply forty-eight hours in the past, when Trump stated the United States would take “two weeks” to look if the struggle between Israel and Iran may be resolved diplomatically.
In an announcement launched employing the White House on Thursday, Trump stated, “Based on the fact that there’s a huge danger of negotiations that can or may not take place with Iran shortly, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.” Behind the scenes, the Trump administration has been trying to reach a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, and Trump in recent months had reportedly urged Netanyahu to hold off on a strike.
Infographic with a map of Iran showing nuclear sites, reactors, and uranium mines.
Graphic by SYLVIE HUSSON, NALINI LEPETIT-CHELLA, SABRINA BLANCHARD| AFP | via Getty Images
That diplomatic course might also now be closed. Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said recently that “any American military access will undoubtedly be met with irreparable damage.”
“If they enter militarily, they may face damage that they cannot get over,” he added in a declaration read on Iranian state television.
After the U.S. Moves, it became uncertain what alternatives remained for an Iranian retaliation against the USA.
One opportunity with direct effects on the worldwide economic system and deliver chain might be if Tehran had been to set landmines down in the Strait of Hormuz, said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
Tanker ships deliver about 20% of the world’s oil through the narrow frame of water between Iran and Oman. Because ships wouldn’t realize where the landmines were, they could successfully close the strait. “We’re already getting reviews that Iran is jamming ship transponders very, very aggressively,” Croft informed Expressepaper “Fast Money” on Wednesday.
QatarEnergy and the Greek Shipping Ministry have already warned their vessels to avoid the strait as lots as possible, Croft stated.
More such alerts were anticipated following Saturday’s U.S. Assault on Iranian sites.
Infographic with a map of the Gulf showing maritime tanker traffic in September 2024 through the Strait of Hormuz
Getty Images
Trump and previous American presidents have long insisted that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
During his first term, Trump pulled the U.S. Out of a nuclear settlement that the Obama administration and other international locations had brokered with Iran in 2015, arguing it failed to defend America or deter Tehran’s enrichment ambitions.
Israel has again and again threatened to strike Iran’s nuclear program and has long asserted that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. But till now, Tel Aviv has restricted its navy engagement to targeted assassinations and cyber assaults.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of countrywide intelligence, testified before Congress in March that the U.S. Intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has no longer authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
However, Trump has constantly denied the assessment of his very own Cabinet member. “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very near having one,” Trump stated on Air Force One final week.