USA drops bombs on Iran as Donald Trump warns Iran could face 'tragedy'
USA drops bombs on Iran as Donald Trump warns Iran could face 'tragedy'
The US military has taken action against Iran
US President Donald Trump on June 16 (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
(Image: Getty )
President Donald Trump says that the United States military has struck three sites in Iran. The US has directly joined Israel's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear programme in a bid to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran's threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.
Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, quoting a provincial official, confirmed attacks on Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. Addressing the nation from the White House, Mr Trump said Iran's key nuclear plants were 'completely and fully obliterated'. There was no independent damage assessment.
It was not clear whether the US would continue attacking Iran alongside its ally Israel, which has been engaged in a nine-day war with Iran. Mr Trump acted without congressional authorisation, and he warned that there would be additional strikes if Tehran retaliated against US forces.
'There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,' he said. The decision to directly involve the US in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country's air defences and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities.
US and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound (13,500-kg) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily-fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear programme buried deep underground.
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'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,' Mr 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.'
Mr Trump added in a later post that he would address the national audience at 10pm eastern time, writing: 'This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!'
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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.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will 'result in irreparable damage for them'.
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NBC News
24 minutes ago
- NBC News
Iran strikes push Vance, a foreign intervention skeptic, into the role of salesman
When he endorsed Donald Trump's 2024 presidential bid, then-Sen. JD Vance framed his support around a simple idea: Trump had started no wars in his first term. Now serving as his vice president, Vance is being called on to make a more complicated case in defense of Trump's decision Saturday to drop bombs on nuclear enrichment sites in Iran. Vance was by Trump's side in the White House Situation Room during the strikes, and at the televised address to announce them. And the next morning, he appeared on two Sunday news shows to answer for the United States' direct plunge into a conflict between Israel and Iran. The U.S., Vance asserted on NBC News' ' Meet the Press,' was not at war with Iran but, rather, with Iran's nuclear weapons program. Diplomacy, Vance added, 'was never given a real chance by the Iranians.' And on ABC's ' This Week,' Vance argued that Trump's contention that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated' was not meaningfully different from a tamer characterization in The New York Times that the program had been 'severely damaged.' Vance's salesmanship Sunday — amplified along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio's by the White House's rapid response team in a stream of clips posted on social media — was not out of line with some of his more hawkish statements on Iran. But his TV appearances were also meant to reassure others who, like Vance, have been broadly skeptical of or opposed to foreign intervention. 'I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,' Vance said on 'Meet the Press.' 'I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.' A clash with Iran, Vance added, 'is not going to be some long, drawn out thing. We've got in, we've done the job of setting their nuclear program back. We're going to now work to permanently dismantle that nuclear program over the coming years, and that is what the president has set out to do. Simple principle: Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.' Vance 'was selected to be VP in part for situations exactly like this,' said a person close to Trump's team who was granted anonymity to share internal thinking. 'The president has total trust in his ability to effectively communicate the administration's message, especially in hostile territory, in a manner that can bring his coalition together, instead of dividing it,' this person added. A divided coalition has been a concern inside Trump world since Israel launched air strikes against Iran last week, prompting retaliation from Iran — and fears that the U.S. would soon become more directly involved in the conflict. Many influential figures in Trump's MAGA movement, from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to young right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, have strong isolationist or anti-intervention views and popular platforms from which to share them. Vance himself has been a tip of the spear for such positions, which he articulated in the January 2023 guest column he wrote to endorse Trump in the Wall Street Journal. Several people in Trump's orbit have cited that endorsement, which came at a low moment in Trump's 2024 campaign, as a key building block in a relationship that blossomed into the vice presidency. 'In Mr. Trump's four years in office, he started no wars despite enormous pressure from his own party and even members of his own administration,' Vance wrote in the column, which appeared online under the headline 'Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.' 'Not starting wars is perhaps a low bar, but that's a reflection of the hawkishness of Mr. Trump's predecessors and the foreign-policy establishment they slavishly followed,' Vance added. That worldview, held by Vance and others, was at the time particularly potent given far-right opposition to U.S. intervention in Russia's war against Ukraine. But those close to Vance note that he has over time applied a more nuanced thinking toward Iran. Speaking last year on a show hosted by Morgan Ortagus, a foreign policy operative who has served Trump as a deputy special presidential envoy to the Middle East, Vance called for an 'aggressive' approach to ensure that Iran does not develop or deploy a nuclear weapon. 'And if, God forbid, they get there, then I think you have to be willing to take some extreme steps — if they're going to be effective — to ensure that they don't have a broader nuclear capability, that they can't launch nuclear missiles all over the Middle East or even all over the world,' Vance said in the interview. 'I think we have to be aggressive with this, and I come at this from a position of some restraint in foreign policy. I think war often leads to unintended consequences but preventing Iran from getting a bomb — really, really important.' In a Fox News interview during last year's Republican National Convention, Vance held up Trump's first term drone attack that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani as an example of smart leadership. 'A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs,' Vance told host Sean Hannity. 'If you're going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard. And that's what he did when he took out Soleimani.' More recently, at last month's Munich Leaders Conference in Washington, Vance described Iran's nuclear program as a tipping point. 'We really think that if the Iran domino falls, you're going to see nuclear proliferation all over the Middle East,' Vance said. 'That's very bad for us. It's very bad for our friends. And it's something that we don't think can happen.' Last week, as anticipation of U.S. intervention grew, Vance used his personal X account to issue a 374-word preemptive defense of whatever Trump might decide to do with Iran. The president, Vance wrote, 'has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.'
Economist
27 minutes ago
- Economist
The American attacks allow Netanyahu to end the wars with Iran and in Gaza, says his predecessor
THE AMERICAN attacks on Iran's three nuclear sites mark a dramatic escalation in the conflict that began on June 13th with the Israeli assault on Iran. President Donald Trump, in his characteristically unpredictable fashion, resolved to undertake an action he had eschewed for years, both during his first term in office and in recent months, despite making repeated threats against Iran.
Telegraph
36 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘Enjoy the fireworks': Cautious optimism on the streets of Tel Aviv
Alerts blared out on phones across Israel at 7.30am on Sunday and, just a minute or so after the blast doors were pulled tight, deep percussive thuds reverberated through the Tel Aviv bomb shelter. It was one of the largest salvos of recent days, with at least 40 ballistic missiles fired at the Jewish state from Iran. All across the country, people were hunkering down, most unaware of the overnight US strikes on Fordow and Iran's other nuclear facilities. Sleep has been hard enough for most Israelis over the last week, with phones often inundated with missile alerts and news notifications in the dead of night. The 15 to 20 people in the Tel Aviv hotel shelter sucked in a collective breath with the thud of the impacts but quickly turned to their phones to peruse reports on the night's action. One by one, smiles spread across sleepy faces with the knowledge that the US had joined Israel in its fight against Iran. This is a country where people have long believed that 'strength' is all. 'For me, the biggest message this sends is that no one f---s with us,' a young South African-born Israeli told me after the blast doors opened. Seven kilometres to the north, a ballistic missile had slammed into the densely compacted residential neighbourhood of Ramat Aviv. Others caused devastation in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv, and the northern city of Haifa. There were no deaths, but more than 100 people were reported injured. The shockwave at the Tel Aviv housing estate sheared off the outside wall off an old but smart-looking concrete apartment block and destroyed multiple neighbouring houses. That block alone contained 34 apartments and an adjacent high-rise had its windows blown out from top to bottom on the blast-facing side, making hundreds homeless. It is thought that at least 20 were injured there. A senior police officer said at the scene that tragedy was averted because everyone got to their safe rooms. The contents of the apartments – clothes, kitchen implements, children's toys – were strewn across the rubble, as hundreds of residents evacuated with what belongings they could save. They join nearly 9,000 Israeli civilians who are now homeless because of the missile strikes, according to the Israel Defense Forces. With the US strike and Iran's retaliation came new emergency lockdown orders from the government, which once again closed most shops and businesses. Nevertheless, the mood on the streets of the city was upbeat, if muted. People nodded knowingly as Telegraph reporters made their way to the blast scene, with several offering fist bumps. 'It's good, but I'm not sure', said one woman of the US strikes. 'Every day, it's a new adventure here. You don't know what comes next. We just want to live.' At a local Mizrahi-run cafe, the owner offered your correspondents a complimentary shot of arrack. 'Congratulations', he said. 'Enjoy the fireworks'. Excitement – good and bad – comes in quick succession in Israel, and no one pretends to know how things will pan out. Over the past week, there had been real anxiety that Donald Trump would decide against military action and leave Israel hanging. Now the mood has lifted, but the country remains under attack. Eldad Shavit, a former head of Mossad's research division, warned on Sunday that Iran was 'ideologically driven' and no one should expect it to give up. It could continue firing missiles at Israel for a 'month or more' based on estimates of its remaining stocks and there was some tentative evidence to suggest it was firing new missiles that were better at evading Israel's celebrated defence systems. Terrorism could also not be ruled out through its proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which were badly damaged but not entirely degraded, she said. The war is also costing Israel economically and politically. The government is coming under mounting pressure over the provision of bomb shelters and temporary accommodation for the 9,000 Israelis whose homes have been destroyed in the past week. Although most of the missiles and drones targeted at Israel have been intercepted, many have got through, causing considerable damage and spreading anxiety and fear. At least 24 Israelis have been killed in the attacks and the number of wounded now exceeds 900, with thousands of homes destroyed and their occupants displaced. 'After the first deaths, everything changed,' the South African-born Israeli told The Telegraph. 'People saw what a ballistic missile really means. The blast is enormous. From then, everyone is trying to go to a shelter, but there are not enough.' Some 57 per cent of Israel's homes do not have a 'mamad' or safe room as of last year, according to the Israeli Builders Association. And about a quarter of Israelis do not have access to any hardened shelter. The shortage – concentrated in poorer areas often dominated by Arab Israelis or new immigrant communities – is leading to overcrowding and growing discontent. Stories documenting the problem have become a mainstay of local media. Video footage and pictures shared with The Telegraph show a shelter in a down-at-heel district of Tel Aviv so crowded that its blast door could not be closed during an air raid alert on Thursday. Dozens of other people were left standing outside the entrance to the shelter without access to any hardened protection, the person who provided the images said. In response to mounting pressure, the Israeli government approved a plan on Friday to renovate 500 public bomb shelters and deploy 1,000 new mobile roadside shelters across the country. 'In light of the security situation, the government approved via a phone vote a plan to accelerate home front defence,' the defence ministry said. The provision of temporary accommodation for those left homeless by Iran's assault on civilian infrastructure has also become a pressing issue for the Israeli state. Such is the power of some of Iran's ballistic missiles that they can cause hundreds of homes in Israel's densely packed cities to be destroyed in a single blast. The Telegraph witnessed one such strike in the city of Holon, just south of Tel Aviv, on Thursday morning where 746 people from 250 families had to be relocated after their homes were classified as uninhabitable. Sunday's strike on Ramat Aviv was of a similar magnitude in terms of damage. As of Friday at 3pm, 30,735 damage claims had been received by the Israel Tax Authority, including 25,040 related to buildings, 2,623 related to vehicles and another 3,006 related to other property. Most of the displaced are being put up in hotels if they cannot stay with friends or relatives. Caroline Molcho was relocated temporarily to the Dan Panorama hotel in Tel Aviv after her home was destroyed in a strike last week. The French-Israeli had been in a safe room in her apartment when the missile hit. 'I feel so lucky – it really saved my life, but now we have no idea how long this process will last, how long will I stay here. The future is now really uncertain,' she said.
