President Trump announced Saturday the United States had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, including the Fordow site that is located in a mountainside.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“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,” Trump added. “Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”
The announcement of U.S. action against Iran came two days after the White House said Trump would decide whether to get involved in the conflict between Iran and Israel “in the next two weeks” to give a window for negotiations.
Trump gave a brief nationwide address from the White House at 10 p.m. ET Saturday, and said there would be further communication from the Pentagon Sunday morning.
White House sources indicated the U.S. had given Israel a heads up before it struck the Iranian sites and that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke after the strikes.
It marked a significant entrance by the U.S. into a conflict that Israel and Iran had been in for nearly two weeks. It also indicated a reversal by Trump, who said for weeks he would have rather sought a diplomatic solution with Iran, and had sent U.S. officials to make a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program.
It was not immediately clear if the U.S. had deployed specialized “bunker-buster” bombs that experts said could penetrate the mountain where Fordow is located. Israel had indicated in the past week that its strikes had also set Iran’s nuclear program back by at least two or three weeks before Trump issued the U.S. strikes Saturday.
While the U.S. was not involved in Israel’s initial missile strikes initially, all eyes were on Trump and whether he would get directly involved. He campaigned heavily on being an anti-war president, blaming former President Biden for the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas war , saying those conflicts would have never started if he was in the White House.
Trump has been adamant that Iran could not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and he indicated Tehran would not be allowed to enrich uranium as part of any deal. Those deals collapsed once Israel began bombing Iran more than a week ago.
Several Democratic and Republican lawmakers weighed in Saturday night to Trump’s announcement. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) called it “not constitutional.”
But the majority of the GOP supported the president’s actions against Iran.
Updated 9:50 p.m. ET
