While U.S. military planners were hard at work preparing strikes on Iran, they also worried that the commander-in-chief was giving away their top-secret operation online.
In fact, President Donald Trump’s social media habit was the ‘biggest threat to opsec,’ or operational security, that the plan faced, a military official told the New York Times.
Trump posted repeatedly about the intensifying war between Iran and Israel last week while mulling whether to push forward with the U.S. strikes now known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
‘Everyone should evacuate Tehran,’ Trump wrote last Monday. The next day, the president departed from the G7 in Canada early, telling reporters he had to do something ‘much bigger’ than a ceasefire deal.
‘Stay tuned,’ he added.
The president had reportedly made up his mind to strike around that time, but inside the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command, military officials worried that Trump’s social media posts were tipping his hand to Tehran, the Times reports.
So to throw the Iranians off the scent, the commanders hatched a scheme to distract the world with a decoy.
Two fleets of B-2 bombers would leave Missouri at the same time flying in different directions, one heading east and the other soaring west.
President Donald Trump was active on his Truth Social app last week discussing the Israel-Iran war, reportedly a cause of concern among his military planners
Seven B-2 bombers were used in the U.S. strikes on Iran. They took off from Missouri before flying a 37 round-trip mission
The president and some of his Cabinet members in the Situation Room while Operation Midnight Hammer was ongoing
The two B-2s heading west kept on their flight transponders, meaning they could be spotted by commercial and military trackers.
The seven B-2s that headed east kept their transponders off. Those were the ones carrying the 14 GBU-57 bunker buster bombs that would drop on Iran’s nuclear sites.
Trump’s social media posts may have also been a ruse.
Trump posted on Thursday that he would decide on U.S. military involvement in Iran ‘within the next two weeks,’ a often-used phrase that was widely ridiculed by his critics.
However, the strikes came just two days later on Saturday.
‘Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all,’ Pentagon Sec. Pete Hegseth said at a Sunday morning press conference.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine told reporters the western-bound flights were a ‘deception effort.’
Trump’s social media habit was the ‘biggest threat’ to the mission’s operational security, a military official said
‘Part of the package proceeded to the west and into the Pacific as a decoy, a deception effort known only to an extremely small number of climbers and key leaders here in Washington,’ Caine said Sunday.
The surprise was so thorough that U.S. forces did not see any Iranian military jets take off to intercept the bombers.
Not a single shot was fired at U.S. forces during the operation, Caine said.
Over 125 U.S. aircraft participated in the mission, including bombers, fighters, and refueling tankers, the chairman added.
Approximately 75 precision-guided weapons were deployed in the attacks, including Tomahawk missiles fired from submarines.
