President Donald Trump on Saturday said the “mass precision strikes” carried out by American bombers on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities had been successful and warned that more of the same could be on the table if Tehran does not return to negotiations.
Speaking from the Cross Hall in the White House and flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, the ex-Florida senator who serves as his national security adviser as well as Secretary of State, the president described the airstrikes as “a spectacular military success” and said the three facilities targeted by U.S. warplanes had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” he said.
Trump thanked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli forces for the “wonderful job” they’ve done during a week-long campaign to take out much of Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, and said the Israeli operation — along with tonight’s American airstrikes — had “gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel” from the Iranian nuclear program.
He also warned Tehran that their aggression in the region and their nuclear ambitions “cannot continue” and cautioned Iranian leaders not to retaliate.
“There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s 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,” he said.
The president’s remarks came just hours after he took to Truth Social to announce that U.S. forces had struck Iranian nuclear facilities in Natanz and Esfahan, as well as the Fordow enrichment facility hidden in a mountain near the city of Qom, ending days of speculation over whether he’d order American forces to join Israel’s week-old campaign to knock out Tehran’s nuclear weapons program with a surprise attack aimed at bringing Iranian officials back to the negotiating table.
The Natanz and Esfahan sites were hit by a salvo of 30 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles — cruise missiles with a range of at least 1,000 miles — fired from American submarines, while the Fordow site, which is located hundreds of feet underground, required as many as six 30,000 munitions known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, which are referred to by the Air Force designation GBU-57A/B.
Those so-called bunker-buster bombs were designed specifically to attack and destroy hardened facilities such as Fordow, especially those that could house weapons of mass destruction.
The bombs used against Fordow were dropped from B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flying out of Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri.
Iranian officials have confirmed the attacks on all three facilities, with the missile strikes on Esfahan and Natanz facilities coming at approximately 2:30 am local time on Sunday. They did not describe the extent of any damage to the facilities, but the Tasnim news agency — an outlet affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps — said a spokesperson for the Emergency Committee of Qom acknowledged that “parts” of the Fordow facility had been “bombed.”
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