The US military struck Iran with some of its most elusive weapons: stealth bombers and a hidden submarine

The US military relied on two of its most elusive and secretive combat platforms to carry out strikes on Iran's top nuclear facilities, a top general revealed Sunday.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that seven US Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers dropped 14 heavy bunker-buster bombs on the facilities as part of a secret, highly complex operation the previous night.
The flying-wing B-2, built by US aerospace company Northrop Grumman, features a unique low-observable stealth design that gives it the ability to penetrate enemy airspace heavily defended by surface-to-air missiles without being spotted.
Caine told reporters that a US Navy guided-missile submarine also launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles from an undisclosed location in the Middle East at Iranian targets.
Caine didn't specify what type of submarine was involved in the mission against Iran. The Pentagon declined to disclose the name of the submarine that participated in the operation, and the Navy referred Business Insider to the White House, which did not immediately respond.
Guided-missile submarine generally refers to the Navy's Ohio-class SSGNs, which can carry more than 150 BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, subsonic jet-powered munitions that can be launched from the sea to strike targets over 1,000 miles away.
General Dynamics Electric Boat builds the Navy's Ohio-class submarines. These stealthy undersea assets are made with streamlined hulls and quiet propulsion systems, among other technologies, for evading detection.
The Ohios, however, are not the only US subs capable of launching Tomahawk missiles.
The US military does not typically disclose details of its secretive missile subs, except when it is trying to send a message to adversaries and signal deterrence.
President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US had bombed the Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan nuclear facilities in what he said was a "spectacular military success" that "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's key enrichment facilities.
Beyond the B-2s and the lone submarine, Caine said the operation, called Midnight Hammer, also involved dozens of fighter jets and aerial refueling tankers. He said US forces used 75 precision-guided weapons against Iranian targets.
The B-2s dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs — specifically, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory in partnership with Boeing. The big 15-ton weapon is the US military's largest non-nuclear bomb and is regarded as the bomb best suited for hitting Iran's more protected nuclear facilities.
The B-2 is the only operational aircraft that can carry the heavy MOP, though the new B-21 Raider will be able to as well. The Spirit can carry two of these munitions.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the strikes "devastated the Iranian nuclear program."
The operation comes as Israeli forces have pounded Iran with relentless strikes over the past 10 days, with fighter jets targeting the country's nuclear program and military capabilities, including air defenses and missile launchers. Tehran has retaliated by launching hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel.
Trump, over the past few days, had been weighing whether to join Israel in its bombing campaign. His administration has been tied up in efforts to reach a new nuclear deal with Iran, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has preferred a military approach. He later praised Trump for the US strikes.
The US involvement is an escalation in the conflict that could see Iran retaliate against US forces in the Middle East. The Pentagon has a large presence across the region, including warships, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and ground troops that it says is intended to protect US interests. The president and Pentagon leadership is urging Iran to pursue peace and threatening continued attacks if they do not. It remains to be seen how Iran responds.

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Trump floats regime change in Iran after US strikes nuclear sites, muddying the administration's message

President Donald Trump's top national security officials spent much of Sunday insisting his administration doesn't want to bring about the end of Iran's government, only its nuclear program. Then Trump left the door open for exactly that. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!' Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. While Trump did not call for the ouster of the regime, or say that the U.S. would play any role in overthrowing the Iranian government, his words undercut what had appeared to be a coordinated message from his top advisers. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth each insisted Sunday that the U.S. was only interested in dismantling Iran's nuclear capabilities. 'We don't want to achieve regime change. We want to achieve the end of the Iranian nuclear program,' Vance told ABC. 'That's what the president set us out to do.' The others also focused their statements around the idea that the strikes were limited and focused solely on Iran's nuclear program. The conflicting tones highlight the difficulty the Trump administration faces as it tries to navigate the fallout — both domestically and abroad — of its massive strike on Iran. Officials want to convince Tehran to keep its response limited, and mollify the factions of the MAGA base that didn't want the U.S. to launch the strikes. But Trump's post makes clear the sense inside the administration that this all may end with the Iranian government toppled. Rubio was the first to flag the possibility on Sunday. While he reiterated that toppling Iran's theocratic republic was not the goal of the strikes, he said that if the country remained committed to becoming a nuclear power, it could imperil the survival of the regime. 'I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that,' Rubio said, speaking on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures. Trump's willingness to consider regime change is likely to stoke divisions inside his party. So far, many of Trump's supporters, many of whom had opposed attacking Iran, have rallied around him, cheering the strike as a limited action, but there were already signs of dissension before his social media post. In a lengthy post on X, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she is 'sick of' American participation in foreign wars and feared the knock on effects. 'American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits,' she said. Vance was seen as the leader of the GOP's anti-war faction before he endorsed Trump's approach this week. Vance said in a separate interview Sunday that the U.S. sees a path toward speaking with Iran's current government and integrating it into the international community if it pledges to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.. 'We want to end their nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement here,' he said on NBC's Meet the Press. Though it will take days to assess the full effect of American strikes, Iran has already vowed to retaliate. The country's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that the U.S. 'crossed a very big red line' and that it was not the time for diplomacy. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long publicly flirted with Iranian regime change, saying that changing Iran's government is not the goal of Israeli operations but could be an effect as the country is weakened. Inside the administration, Trump and his team still feel confident they can keep the response from spilling into something larger. 'Trump believes he can do this without regime change, and if anyone can, it's going to be him,' a U.S. official said before Trump's social media post, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. Victoria Coates, former deputy national security adviser in Trump's first term and vice president at the Heritage Foundation, said 'the big question' will be whether he can keep the party together but that the initial signs are positive — including Vance's support. 'He is taking the role of asking some tough questions that need to be asked, but if he's satisfied — as clearly he was about the Iran operation — he's going to get on board and support the president, because that's what his job is,' she said. 'It indicates to me that the vast majority of the party is going to come together here — there's always going to be some outliers.' Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.), said the U.S. has learned lessons from past entanglements and like others in his party tried to differentiate Trump's decision from other American wars in the Middle East. 'All of us understand that…you do not go into a country of nearly 90 million people and think that you're going to get out quickly,' Issa said on Fox News. 'The president is not trying to do regime change and made that clear. He is trying to change the regime's way of doing business.' Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Trump ally, said the president is trying to frame the strikes on Iran as similar to his move in his first term to direct the killing of the then top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, 'which wasn't about regime change.' 'Israel wants regime change,' he wrote on X. 'The only off-ramp now is that Trump might have to (once again) restrain Israel.' Few within the Republican party have publicly come out in favor of overthrowing Iran's government or backing Israel in doing so. Still, Trump last week mused publicly about killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And there are Republican hawks pushing to seize the opportunity to topple the government in Tehran. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a hawkish voice in the party, said on Meet the Press Sunday that Israel should have tried to topple Iran's government 'a long time ago.' Graham said he spoke Sunday with Netanyahu, who told Graham, 'this regime is not going to be tolerated by Israel.' After Trump's post, Graham said on X, 'President Trump is spot on with his desire to make Iran great again by changing the regime either through their behavior or new leadership.' Hegseth said on Sunday that the U.S. had delivered messages publicly and privately to Iran, adding that the regime understands 'precisely' the administration's position. In hailing the operation as a success at a Pentagon press conference, Hegseth underscored that the goal of the attack 'has not been about regime change' and pledged that the U.S. effort in Iran would not be 'open-ended,' batting away any comparisons to the long running American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Trump campaigned against. 'Anything can happen in conflict, we acknowledge that,' Hegseth told reporters. 'But the scope of this was intentionally limited. That's the message that we're sending.' Another longtime GOP national security official with ties to some of the party's more hawkish figures suggested that Iran's military options are 'severely degraded' and that escalation should concern Tehran far more than it would the White House. 'The idea should terrify Khamenei,' said the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But if Iran were to retaliate, Trump, as he first teased in his remarks from the White House Saturday evening, could go further. Eli Stokols, Connor O'Brien and Joe Gould contributed to this report.

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Trump Changed. The Intelligence Didn't.

Whenever Donald Trump has contemplated confrontation with Iran, his decisions have been guided less by the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community than by his own calculation of risk and reward. At times he has pulled the trigger. At times he has backed down. All the while, the U.S. assessment of Iranian nuclear intentions has stayed remarkably consistent. Now, Trump has gone all in. His decision this week to drop more than a dozen of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal on key Iranian nuclear facilities was based, he has said, on his belief that Iran is close to being able to make the ultimate weapon. That's not exactly what his intelligence agencies have concluded. Their official, publicly stated assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions is that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suspended the country's nuclear weapons program in 2003, the year that the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein in order to seize his supposed weapons of mass destruction. Those turned out not to exist. But Iran's leaders reasonably feared the United States might next turn its sights on their country and its very real weapons program. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence and (on paper at least) Trump's senior intelligence adviser, reiterated the consensus view in congressional testimony this March. But she also noted that Iran had built up its largest-ever stockpile of enriched uranium, the core ingredient of a weapon, in a manner that was 'unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.' Her brief remark escaped much scrutiny, but turns out to have been telling. In recent briefings with Trump, CIA Director John Ratcliffe has laid out what the intelligence agencies know, particularly about Iran's uranium stockpiles, and said it was clear Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon, according to officials familiar with his presentation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. On its face, that appears to contradict the long-standing intelligence community position. But Ratcliffe's analysis is actually a more nuanced reading of the available information. In a separate briefing for lawmakers last week, Ratcliffe used a football analogy to describe Iran's ambitions. If a team had gone 99 yards down the field, their intention was obviously to score a touchdown, not stop at the one-yard line, he said. International experts agree that Iran has enriched uranium to a point that is close to weapons grade, a fact that Vice President J.D. Vance has emphasized in his own public remarks. Senior administration officials take little comfort in Khameini's decades-old halt to the nuclear weapons program. Trump believes Iran is actively pursuing everything it would need to build a weapon, and in relatively short order, if the supreme leader gave the go-ahead. That's the real threat, and the reason Trump gave the order to strike now, officials told me. It also helps that Israel has helped pave the way. Trump's thinking is in line with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said that Iran may have been months or mere weeks away from building a weapon, and has generally taken the view that the country's leaders are stockpiling uranium precisely for that purpose. In the week leading up to the U.S. strike-–which Israeli leaders appear not to have known about in advance-–the Israeli air force pummeled nuclear facilities, killed nuclear scientists and experts, and degraded Iranian air defenses. The Israeli attacks, like the American ones, appear to have been largely driven by a sense of opportunity, after Israel previously weakened the regime and neutralized its longtime proxy forces in the region. There is no reason to think that the Trump administration, or Israel, suddenly had some new window into Khamieni's brain. But the president took an intuitive view of the intelligence the United States has long possessed, and a fateful set of actions based on it. It's too pat to say that Trump has ignored his intelligence advisers, although he certainly created that impression. 'Well then my intelligence community is wrong,' he said earlier in the week when a reporter noted that the agencies had found no evidence that Iran was trying to build a weapon. Trump had previously said Gabbard was also wrong when she testified earlier this year. Officials have told me that they're not just concerned about Iran's ability to build a warhead that could be placed atop a ballistic missile—a complex process that would require Iran to build a device that could survive reentry into earth's atmosphere and land precisely on its target. The regime could construct a simpler device and hand it over to a third party. In an interview last month with a state-linked news outlet, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a leading Iranian nuclear scientist and the former head of the country's Atomic Energy Organization, warned that Iran could use nuclear weapons against the United States, Great Britain, and Israel without deploying them on missiles or an aircraft. 'What if they are attacked from within?' he asked, an unsubtle suggestion that Iran could give a nuclear weapon to one of its proxies. Israel was apparently listening and thought that Abbassi-Davani might possess the know-how to make such a device. He was killed earlier this month in an Israeli air strike. Democratic lawmakers and Trump's critics are sure to press for more information on when and how the president came to his decision. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told my colleague Issac Stanely-Becker on Saturday that he was briefed last week on the intelligence. It ' was clear to me that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, that they are not on the verge of being able to obtain a nuclear weapon that could pose a real threat to neighbors and that negotiations were ongoing and certainly not at their endpoints,' Murphy said. On Saturday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed reporters about the U.S. operation and was asked if new information had persuaded Trump to act. Hegseth declined to share many details about Trump's decision-making, but he allowed that, "the president has made it very clear [that] he's looked at all of this, all of the intelligence, all the information, and come to the conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is a threat, and was willing to take this precision operation to neutralize that threat.' Ultimately, Trump's decision to bomb Iran had little to do with any sudden change in intelligence assessments. The choice to use military force was a judgment call, and now, it's his to own.