On Saturday evening, Donald J. Trump, less than six months into his second term, became a wartime president when the United States, at his direction, joined Israel to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities.
“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Trump said from the White House. “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.”
There was no military that could do what the United States just did, Trump said in a boast that served as a deadly warning. With Vice President JD Vance to his right and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to his left, the president told Iran to make peace.
“If they do not,” Trump added, “future attacks will be far greater – and a lot easier.” The president had previously said that the U.S. knew the location of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei but chose not to strike him. During remarks that lasted little more than four minutes Saturday night, Trump gave a new warning.
“Remember,” he said of Iran, “there are many targets left.”
The president first announced the strikes via social media when all U.S. warplanes had left Iranian airspace. Long wary of foreign intervention but consistently adamant that Iran not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, Trump brought the U.S. into the war after warning Tehran to abandon their nuclear ambitions, or he would seek “a real end” to the Israeli-Iranian conflict.
Iran did not listen. After giving Iran a 60-day ultimatum, Trump had offered Tehran “a second chance.” A spokesperson for Iran called that overture “meaningless” given ongoing Israeli strikes.
Those audacious Israeli strikes, which began last Friday, targeted top scientists and military officials helming the Iranian nuclear program as well as key military installations. By the end of the week, the Israelis boasted that they had achieved complete air dominance. But they could not penetrate the Fordow nuclear fuel enrichment plant deep underground. Only bunker-busting American ordnance could destroy that target.
Enter the United States Air Force – most likely, the B-2 Stealth Bomber and the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, known as a MOP.
“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” Trump wrote on social media, declaring the operation a success and calling for peace. Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close friend of the president, reported after a conversation with Trump that the nuclear facility had been obliterated “with six huge bunker buster bombs.”
Whether and how the Iranians counterattack, one senior White House official told RealClearPolitics, “is the thousand-dollar question!” Iran launched ballistic missiles in 2018 at two U.S. military bases in Iraq after Trump ordered the successful killing of Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Quds forces. But the latest strikes against the nuclear facilities, another senior administration official said, represent a “very different reality.”
The Iranian air force was still operational after the Soleimani strike, its military leadership still intact. After nine days of around-the-clock barrages by Israel, the official said, Tehran is significantly weakened by comparison today. “That said,” the official cautioned, “the country is run by religious fanatics.”
The takeaway moving forward? “Don’t fuck with President Trump,” the official concluded.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu heralded the strikes. “Congratulations, President Trump,” he said in a statement. “Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history.” The two men spoke after the strikes were complete, a senior White House official told RCP. The White House also gave Israel “a heads up” before the strikes began, the official added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demurred when asked Friday if Trump would go to Congress for war authority. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals,” she told RCP. Asked what authority the president invoked to strike Iran late Saturday night, a White House official told RCP that he used the legal authority “afforded to him as Commander in Chief.”
Trump not only condemned Iran as “the bully of the Middle East” but also seemed to argue that Iran represented a threat to the United States. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America! Death to Israel!’” He noted that during the War on Terror, Iran had been “killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs.” Tens of thousands were dead, he added, as a result “of their hate.”
Congressional leaders were also alerted. According to a source with direct knowledge, Speaker Mike Johnson was briefed ahead of the attacks.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress in March that while Iran had an “unprecedented” amount of enriched uranium, the nation has not restarted its nuclear program. On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told Fox News, “We have confirmed that Iran does have, even now, enough material for several warheads.”
The White House said Thursday that Iran was “a couple of weeks” away from achieving a nuclear weapon once given the go-ahead from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Asked if that conclusion was the result of U.S. intelligence or intelligence-sharing from an ally, Trump spokeswoman Leavitt told RCP, “The United States government maintains this fact – that Iran has never been closer to obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
In each of his campaigns, Trump ran against forever wars. His attack on Iran will now test the political coalition that made him president.
Steve Bannon, an architect of the president’s first successful race, complained bitterly last week that warmongers were “running the Iraq War playbook over again” and risking the same disastrous consequences. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said that an attack would be “a perfect way to scuttle the U.S.S. America on the shoals of Iran,” warning that it would effectively end Trump’s presidency.
But as skeptical as he has been of foreign wars, Trump has consistently said that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon. On Saturday, he delivered on that promise. At the conclusion of his remarks Saturday, Trump took a moment to say thanks.
“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,” concluded the now wartime president.
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