Just over a week after Israel began bombing Iran, targeting its military and nuclear sites, the US has attacked three key Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
On Saturday night, President Donald Trump revealed on Truth Social: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran. 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.”
Despite there being no public accounting of the damage yet, reports have described the US dropping 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs onto the mountain above the Fordow nuclear site. Other reports from the US reveal that the actual state of Tehran’s nuclear program remained unclear.
In a brief televised address hours later, Trump called the strikes “a spectacular military success”, boasting that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
The following day, Trump published another post on Truth Social, addressing the issue of Iranian regime change and suggesting that his military goals could become more expansive.
“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!!!” he wrote.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that the strikes were not about regime change but “a precision operation” targeting Iran’s nuclear program. He also warned Iran against following through with previous threats of retaliation against the US and said that US forces would defend itself if necessary.
Trump’s latest decision contradicts his previous vow to not get involved militarily in a major foreign war. He ordered the strikes without the permission from Congress.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that the strikes were a limited action to target Iran’s nuclear capabilities, at that it did not meet the definition of war. “This is not a war against Iran,” he said, adding that if Iran are determined to become a nuclear weapons power, it would put “the regime at risk.”
“Look, at the end of the day, if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power, I do think it puts the regime at risk,” he said. “If what [Iran] want is nuclear reactors, so they can have electricity, there are so many other countries in the world that do that, and they don’t have to enrich their own uranium. But if what they want is a secret program buried in the mountain where no one can see it and inspectors can only come when they say they can come … then they’re going to have big problems, because this is a dangerous, violent, radical regime, not the Iranian people.”
“And if what they want is some secret program that looks nothing like the civil nuclear programs around the world, that looks a lot like you’re trying to build a bomb, they’re going to continue to have problems, not just with us, but with many other countries in the world.”
Vice President JD Vance echoed his statements, defending Trump’s actions by saying the president had “clear authority to act to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
“We don’t want a regime change,” Vance told Kristen Welker in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “We do not want to protract this… We want to end the nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement here. I think that we have really pushed their program back by a very long time. I think that it’s going to be many, many years before the Iranians are going to be able to develop a nuclear weapon.”
Hours later, on ABC’s This Week, Vice President Vance conceded they did not know the exact location of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
“We are going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel and that’s one of the things that we’re going to have conversations with the Iranians about,” Vance said, referring to a batch of uranium enough to make nine or ten atomic weapons.
Iran’s foreign ministry released a statement in response to the US strikes, warning that Tehran “considers it its right to resist with all its might against U.S. military aggression.” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said his country would consider all possible responses and that there would be no return to diplomacy until it had retaliated.
“The U.S. showed they have no respect for international law,” he said on Sunday in Istanbul. “They only understand the language of threat and force.”
In the past few hours, Araghchi arrived in Moscow on a diplomatic campaign to “rally the world against Israel,” according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
UN: gravely alarmed
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely alarmed” by the US strikes. During an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Sunday, Guterres said “We now risk descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”
“We must act – immediately and decisively – to halt the fighting and return to serious, sustained negotiations on the Iran nuclear programme. “One path leads to a wider war,” the UN chief continued, “deeper human suffering and serious damage to the international order. The other leads to de-escalation, diplomacy and dialogue.”
Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that “ dropping a thirty-thousand-pound bomb,” was “unprecedented.”
“Anyone who has observed the last two decades of history in the Middle East would think hard about unleashing such an attack,” he toldThe New Yorker. “You would want to think several steps ahead, and there is no evidence that the President has done that. His tweet and his public comments have given the impression that this is the end of war and the commencement of peace, but I suspect the Iranians think differently. They have a program on which they have spent hundreds of billions of dollars. The regime—perhaps not the people, but the regime—takes pride in that and now it is destroyed. No dictatorship wants to look emasculated and humiliated in the eyes of its own people.”
Later, Sadjadpour posted on X: “Trump indicated this is now the time for peace. It’s unclear and unlikely the Iranians will see it the same way. This is more likely to open a new chapter of the 46-year-old US-Iran war than conclude it.”
According to some media reports, Tehran, Iran’s capital of almost 10 million people, has cleared out, with residents escaping to the countryside to find shelter and safety from Israeli strikes.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has reported that at least 263 civilians had been killed in Iran since Israel began its strikes on June 13, including 39 women and 20 children.
Meanwhile, anti-war protests have crowded the streets in New York, Washington, California, Virginia and Massachusetts. In Richmond, Virginia, demonstrators gathered to rally against the US airstrikes.
A spokesperson for Veterans for Peace said, “The people of the United States do not want a war with Iran; that is the majority. I think MAGA folks are having a big, big pile of buyer’s remorse. Trump ran against war.”
In the northern California town of Chico, another protest was organised by a new anti-Trump Administration group called Re-Sisters. Its founder, LeAnn Jenswold, told the local newspaper that she is concerned that Trump is acting unilaterally.
“Where’s Congress? Trump’s unchecked power/attack on Iran. This is a coalescing of power, a militaristic move. It makes a huge difference to us to be able to do something,” she said of her collective. “We’ve come together and we’re providing visibility for current events.”
Australian response
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has declared the Australian government supports the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, while accusing Iran of “accumulating highly enriched uranium at an almost military level.”
“The world has agreed Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon,” she told the ABC. “So yes, we support action to prevent that. And that is what this is. The big question is now what? And Australia says, like so many other countries, we do not want escalation and a full scale war and we continue to call for dialogue and diplomacy.”
Speaking to Nine News, Minister Wong added: “The world has long understood we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. This action is being taken to prevent that. So, we support action to prevent Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”
According to the Foreign Minister, roughly 2,900 Australians in Iran and 1,300 in Israel have registered for assistance.
She urged Australians in both locations to leave if they can do so safely, and reassured them that officials have been deployed to the Iran-Azerbaijan border to assist in their leave. Meanwhile, the government is waiting for a possible airspace reopening in Israel to help Australians escape the conflict.
“Obviously, this is very fluid, but we are seeking to make arrangements to utilise that window, if we are able. And we have advised Australians on the ground of that fact,” she said. “We are seeking to utilise this opportunity, but the situation on the ground is uncertain and valid and risky.”
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