Trump says US has bombed three nuclear sites in Iran

By Aamer Madhani Associated Press WASHINGTON President Donald Trump stated Saturday that the U S military struck three sites in Iran directly joining Israel s effort to decapitate the country s nuclear plan in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict The decision to directly involve the U S comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities But U S and Israeli personnel have stated that American stealth bombers and a -lb bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily-fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear undertaking buried deep underground We have completed our very productive attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran including Fordow Natanz and Esfahan Trump reported 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 Trump reported B- stealth bombers were used but did not specify which types of bombs were dropped The White House and Pentagon did not instantly elaborate on the operation The strikes are a perilous decision for the U S as Iran has pledged to retaliate if it joined the Israeli assault and for Trump personally having won the White House on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism Trump described reporters on Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the program of two weeks a timeline that seemed drawn out as the situation was evolving swiftly Iran s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday the United States that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will effect in irreparable damage for them And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country s leaders to give up its nuclear campaign peacefully Israel s military disclosed Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war while Iran s foreign minister warned before the U S attack that American military involvement would be very very dangerous for everyone The prospect of a wider war threatened too Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen declared they would resume attacks on U S vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joins Israel s military campaign The Houthis paused such attacks in May under a deal with the U S The U S ambassador to Israel reported the U S had begun assisted departure flights the first from Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Oct that sparked the war in Gaza But Trump appears to have made the calculation at the prodding of Israeli leaders and several Republican lawmakers that Israel s operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran s nuclear operation perhaps permanently The Israelis say their offensive has already crippled Iran s air defenses allowing them to already significantly degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites But to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant Israel has appealed to Trump for U S bunker-busting bombs the -pound GBU- Massive Ordnance Penetrator which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode The penetrator is at this moment only delivered by the B- stealth bomber which is only discovered in the American arsenal The bomb carries a conventional warhead and is held to be able to penetrate about feet meters below the surface before exploding and the bombs can be dropped one after another effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast The International Atomic Vigor Agency has substantiated that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo raising the possibility that nuclear material could be issued into the area if the GBU- A B were used to hit the facility Previous Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site Natanz on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself not the surrounding area the IAEA has disclosed Trump s decision for direct U S military intervention comes after his administration made an unsuccessful two-month push including with high-level direct negotiations with the Iranians aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear project For months Trump commented he was dedicated to a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions And he twice in April and again in late May persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time The U S in contemporary days has been shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel and U S bases from Iranian attacks All the while Trump has gone from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a second chance for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Khamenei and making calls for Tehran s unconditional surrender We know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding Trump revealed in a social media posting He is an easy target but is safe there We are not going to take him out kill at least not for now The military showdown with Iran comes seven years after Trump withdrew the U S from the Obama-administration brokered agreement in calling it the worst deal ever The deal signed by Iran U S and other world powers created a long-term comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions Related Articles All I want is to get married Vallejo woman whose fianc is stuck in Iran laments trip ban Letters California must expand reproductive care in ERs Trump administration orders California to remove gender identity from sex ed Santa Clara County s Rapid Response System sees a surge of calls amid fears of ICE raids Supreme Court lets fuel companies sue over California s tough emission standards Trump decried the Obama-era deal for giving Iran too much in return for too little because the agreement did not cover Iran s non-nuclear malign behavior Trump has bristled at criticism from certain of his MAGA faithful including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson who have suggested that further U S involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end U S involvement in expensive and endless wars Rising informed from Dubai United Arab Emirates Associated Press writers Mehmet Guzel in Istanbul Josef Federman in Jerusalem Samy Magdy in Cairo Matthew Lee and Josh Boak in Washington D C and Farnoush Amiri and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this summary