President Donald Trump expressed certainty that his big gamble to directly assist the Israelis delivered a knockout blow to Iran's nuclear programme — even as many supporters and detractors alike were warning that US military action could draw the US into an expansive regional conflict.
Trump, in brief remarks to the nation on Saturday evening from the White House, said the strikes “obliterated” three critical Iranian enrichment facilities and “the bully of the Middle East must now make peace.”
But it's a risky moment for Trump, who has belittled his predecessors for tying up America in “stupid wars" and has repeatedly said he was determined to keep the U.S. and the Middle East from another expansive conflict.
“There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran," Trump said. He added, “If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill."
The US has struggled for decades to deal with the threat posed by Iran and its proxies.
Iran-backed Hezbollah carried out the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Beirut, the Beirut barracks bombing that same year and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. And Iranian-backed militias were responsible for hundreds of Americans killed during the U.S. war in Iraq.
Trump took note of the long history of animus, and took credit for taking action.
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying death to America. Death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty,” Trump said. “I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue."
The possibility of U.S. involvement had been building for days. Still, the strikes, which were carried out early Sunday morning in Iran, carried an element of surprise.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday had said that Trump would decide whether to move forward with U.S. strikes on Iran within two weeks.
But on Saturday afternoon, commercial flight trackers identified multiple U.S. aerial refueling tankers on a path suggesting that they were accompanying aircraft from the Midwest to the Pacific, raising speculation that something was afoot. Those aircraft may have been a decoy — they were not part of the mission.
Trump returned from his New Jersey golf club just after 6 p.m., and had a previously scheduled evening meeting with his national security team. Less than two hours later, the president announced the strikes had been completed.
The White House posted photos of Trump in the White House Situation Room with top advisers as he monitored the strikes, wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.
The action by Trump immediately raised some concerns among U.S. lawmakers that the president had exceeded his authority.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., quickly posted on the social media site X: “This is not Constitutional.”
Rep Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said on social media that Trump hit Iran without congressional authorisation and lawmakers should pass a resolution he's sponsoring with Massie “to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war.”
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.
The US military used 30,000-pound bunker busters on Fordo, while US submarines also participated in the attacks, launching about 30 Tomahawk land attack missiles, according to a US official who was not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States in advance that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic would “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 had initially hoped that the threat of force would motivate the country's leaders to give up their nuclear programme peacefully.
Ultimately, Trump 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 programme, perhaps permanently.
The Israelis have said their offensive had already crippled Iran's air defences, allowing them already significantly to degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump went forward with the strikes even as there is some murkiness about the US intelligence community's assessment on how close Iran was to building a nuclear weapon.
In March, Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, told lawmakers that it was not building a nuclear weapon and its supreme leader had not reauthorised the dormant programme even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.
Trump earlier this week dismissed the assessment, saying Gabbard was “wrong.” “I don't care what she said,” Trump told reporters.
It's unclear if the US has developed fresh intelligence since Gabbard's March testimony, but she insisted following the public pushback from Trump that the two of them were on the same page about Iran.
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 programme.
For months, Trump said he was dedicated to a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. And he twice — in April and again in late May — persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time.
The US in recent days has been shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel and US bases from Iranian attacks.
All the while, Trump has gone from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a “second chance” for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Khamenei and making calls for Tehran's unconditional surrender.
“We know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader' is hiding,” Trump said in a social media posting. “He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now."
The military showdown comes seven years after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama administration-brokered agreement with Iran, calling it the “worst deal ever.”
The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, the U.S. and other world powers, created a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Trump decried the deal as giving Iran too much in return for too little, because the agreement did not cover Iran's non-nuclear malign behaviour.