In a high-stakes escalation in the Middle East, the United States conducted an airstrike operation codenamed ‘Operation Midnight Hammer’, targeting three of Iran’s major nuclear facilities, Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. The Pentagon said the mission aimed to significantly degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities without provoking broader conflict, and reiterated that regime change was not the goal.
The U.S. also fired dozens of missiles, and President Donald Trump said in a televised address from the White House that the combination of strikes “completely and fully obliterated” three nuclear sites. However, U.S. defense officials said an assessment of the damage wrought by the attack still was ongoing.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said the 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker-buster bomb offered the best chance of destroying sites program buried deep underground — and the U.S. is the only military that has both the munitions and the planes to drop them.
Fourteen of the bombs were used on two nuclear sites, including Fordo, according to Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In all he said, 75 precision-guided weapons were used, including missiles fired from a submarine.
He said the final damage assessment would take time, but that all three sites “sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
Several Iranian officials, including Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, have claimed that Iran moved nuclear material out of the targeted sites before the strikes. Satellite images suggest the entrance tunnels to Fordo were packed with dirt ahead of the attack.
Iran vows to respond: Iran on Sunday vowed to avenge the US bombing of three of its major nuclear facilities saying the American strikes will have “everlasting consequences”.
“The warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression,” he told reporters in Turkey in the first comments by a high-ranking Iranian official since the strikes. “They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities.”
The Iranian foreign minister said Tehran reserves “all options” to defend its “sovereignty, interest, and people.” Araghchi said he would immediate fly to Moscow to coordinate positions with its ally, Russia.
Both Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the three locations following the strikes.
Hours after the U.S. strikes, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a barrage of 40 missiles at Israel, including its Khorramshahr-4, which can carry multiple warheads.
Khamenei hiding in bunker: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reportedly sheltering in a secure underground bunker with all electronic communications suspended to guard against potential assassination attempts, according to a report by The New York Times.
Facing heightened assassination threats from Israel and the United States, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has reportedly taken extraordinary steps to ensure leadership continuity during the ongoing conflict. According to NYT, Khamenei has named three senior clerics as potential successors should he be killed.
If peace doesn’t come quickly, will go after other targets, says Trump: US President Donald Trump asserted that no military in the world could have carried out strikes against the Iranian nuclear sites and also warned Tehran that if peace does not come quickly, America will go after other targets with “precision, speed and skill.”
Addressing a media briefing just hours after the strikes on Saturday (US time), Trump stated, “I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on a operation, the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades. Hopefully we no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope so.”
“This cannot continue. There will either be peace or tragedy for Iran, far greater than what we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left.”
“Tonight was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There is no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There is never been a military that could have done what took place just a little while ago,” he added.
The US President asserted that the strikes were aimed at crippling Iran’s “nuclear enrichment capacity and put a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”
In his statement, Trump extended gratitude to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, “I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team, like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done.”