Trump: US Strikes ‘Obliterated’ Nuclear Fortress Fordow, Other Iran Sites

President Donald Trump said Saturday evening that the United States had conducted successful airstrikes against three key Iranian nuclear facilities, thrusting the United States directly into a war between Israel and Iran and ending days of speculation over whether Trump would decide to intervene on Israel’s behalf.

Trump made that decision public by way of a Truth Social message posted just before the 8 p.m. hour on the East Coast, in which he announced that American bomber attacks on the Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites housed deep inside Iran were complete and “all planes are safely on their way home.”

Addressing the nation in brief remarks from the East Room of the White House, with his war cabinet of Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth standing behind him, Trump added that the targets in Iran were “completely and totally obliterated” and called the mission a “spectacular military success.”

Referring to Iran as the “bully of the Middle East”, Trump delivered a message directly to the Iranian regime, warning that more military action would follow “if peace does not come quickly.”

The strikes on Iran’s nuclear program mark the first direct U.S. military involvement in the escalating Israel-Iran conflict that began nine days ago, and the first time in history the U.S. struck Iran directly.

“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” Trump wrote in his initial announcement. “There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

The president then made the phone rounds with a number of national outlets, as has become a theme of his second-term messaging strategy. He told Axios’ Barak Ravid, “We had great success tonight. Your Israel is much safer now.” He called NBC News to reiterate that the operation was a “great success” before saying he had to go address the country.

On Fox News, Sean Hannity relayed what he said Trump had just told him about the mission’s particulars: B-2 stealth bombers dropped a total of six bunker-busting MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bombs on Fordow, the mountain-fortified enrichment facility believed to be ground zero of the Iranian nuclear program. Natanz and Isfahan were hit with tomahawk missiles from U.S. submarines stationed 400 miles away, Hannity said citing a direct conversation with Trump.

U.S. Re-enters Mideast

The surprise bombing campaign — Trump had given Iran a deadline of two weeks to make a deal as recently as Thursday — effectively brings the U.S. into a new war in the Middle East, with the decision coming directly from a commander-in-chief who rode to his second term in office on an explicitly anti-war message.

The early responses from the right illustrated the roiling divide among Republicans, and Trump supporters more broadly, about getting involved in the conflict in Iran. Reuters reported earlier Saturday that Vice President Vance had said privately that Israel was trying to drag the U.S. into war.

“This is not constitutional,” said Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican often at odds with the new Trump administration.

Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania who is among strongest supporters of Israel in the caucus, called it “the correct move.” On the other side of the aisle, Senator Lindsey Graham echoed that: “This was the right call. The regime deserved it.”

Online, MAGA supporters and influencers were far less assured. Steve Bannon, among the more vocal opponents to U.S. military action in Iran, said on his War Room podcast: “You’re kicking over a hornet’s nest — this is as bad a place in the world as ever.”

“The U.S. has become a combatant in the Persian War,” Bannon said.

Candace Owens, another influential MAGA voice, noted how Trump called for peace in the same message announcing a “payload of bombs was dropped.”

“Utterly deranged,” Owens said, adding the suggestion that Trump was acting on behalf of Miriam Adelson, the pro-Israel megadonor who was instrumental in both of his electoral wins.

Tucker Carlson, who has become something of a resistance leader within MAGA for his furious opposition to the U.S. joining the war, had yet to react on social media.

But Carlson’s earlier outspoken voice on the dangers of the U.S. becoming entangled in Iran puts him in alignment with most Congressional Democrats. Representative Rashida Tlaib called the strikes “f—ing sick” and urged her colleagues in the House to sign onto a war powers resolution that Rep. Massie has spearheaded with Democratic Representative Ro Khanna.

Khanna called on Congress to return to Washington to vote on that resolution to “prevent American from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, was somewhat more circumspect, saying in a lengthy statement that Trump “bears the heavy burden of explaining to the American people why this military action was undertaken,” and adding that the president “shoulders complete and total responsibility” for whatever happens next.

Trump Becomes a War President

The move to send American troops into Iranian airspace to drop 30,000-lb. bombs on its soil represents an extraordinary ramping up of tensions between Iran and the West, and nothing less than a reordering of American foreign policy.

Under three presidents — including Donald Trump in his first term — the U.S. has been reluctant to get directly involved in regional conflicts following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Trump fired a few dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at Syria in the first year of his first term, and famously ordered the strike that killed Iranian military chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020, the potential for the U.S. joining a regime-change war in a country of 90 million people is another matter. Trump said Friday that he was not interested in putting American boots on the ground in Iran, calling it “the last thing you want to do.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei warned last week “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believed to be in hiding, said any U.S. strikes would “result in irreparable damage for them.”

The U.S. public is broadly unsupportive of going to war with the Iranians, with 60 percent against any direct intervention, according to a YouGov poll last week.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been encouraging a more direct American role in his bombing campaign against Tehran, the latest volley in a war between Israel and Iran, via its proxies, that began with Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023. The initial reaction from Israel overnight suggested the country was largely with Trump’s decision.

In a brief address in the early morning hours of Sunday, Netanyahu commended Trump and the U.S. for a “peace through strength” doctrine and for doing “what no other country could do.”

“President Trump took a bold decision for the United States, for Israel, for all of humanity. The world is now a safer place,” echoed Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defense minister.

It was not immediately clear what kind of damage was done at Fordow, which is built deep under a mountain to withstand the impact from bunker-busters, or the other sites. Iran said it had evacuated all three nuclear sites some time ago, according to state TV.

Some 40,000 U.S. troops remain stationed throughout the region as the world awaits a damage assessment from the airstrikes, and Iran’s response.

“There is no ‘one and done’ in any conflict,” said Ret. General Mark Hertling, now a military analyst for CNN. “The opponent always gets a vote, and unless we’ve prepped for all the things Iran may do we’re gonna have some surprises.”