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The US claimed to have inflicted “extremely severe damage and destruction” on Iran’s nuclear facilities as Donald Trump gambled that the operation could hurt the Islamic republic without provoking a military or political backlash.
General Dan Caine, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said on Sunday that seven B-2 bombers had flown for 18 hours from Missouri, dropping 14 “bunker buster” bombs on targets in Iran before returning to the US.
The strikes on Sunday morning in Iran deepen the conflict in the Middle East, which has been in turmoil since Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023. They come just over a week after Israel launched missiles at Iran and Tehran hit back by striking targets in Israel.
The bombing raid dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer was also the first use in conflict of the 30,000lb GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, widely believed to be the only bomb able to penetrate Iran’s subterranean Fordow nuclear site, which defence secretary Pete Hegseth said was the “primary target”.
The US bombers, which had to be refuelled in air multiple times, also targeted a separate site at Natanz, while an Ohio-class guided-missile nuclear submarine was used to fire Tomahawk missiles at a third site in Isfahan.
Even as US officials boasted of the military achievement and the “deception tactics” that involved sending other B-2 bombers in a decoy mission across the Pacific Ocean, they also sought to draw a line under the intervention.
Vice-president JD Vance told NBC: “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear programme . . . We have no interest in a protracted conflict.”
While Vance claimed the US had “destroyed the Iranian nuclear programme” and President Trump earlier said it was “obliterated”, Pentagon officials were more cautious pending a full assessment.
“Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” said Caine.
One person familiar with the attack said the initial results suggested that the strikes had been very “impressive”.
But Iran warned the US of retaliation, with foreign minister Abbas Araghchi saying the US had “crossed a very big red line” with its bombing raid.
“The door for diplomacy should be always kept open,” Araghchi told reporters in Istanbul. “But this is not the case right now.”
While Tehran’s immediate retaliation was more strikes against Israel, injuring 16 people, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned the US of a “regret-inducing response” that could target American military bases in the Middle East.
Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen also said they would resume targeting US vessels in the Red Sea. Some politicians in Tehran called for Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz, to disrupt oil supplies from the Gulf.
US officials said they had no plans for further attacks unless Iran hit back.
“There are no planned military operations right now against Iran unless they mess around and they attack [America] or American interests, then they’re going to have a problem,” said US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country was close to achieving the goals of its military campaign in Iran.
“We embarked on this mission to remove these two concrete threats against our existence: the nuclear threat, and the ballistic missile threat,” Netanyahu told a press conference. “We are very, very close to fulfilling them.”
He added Israel would not continue its military operation “beyond what is necessary . . . but we will also not end it too early”.
The leaders of the UK, France and Germany jointly called on Iran to negotiate a new nuclear deal with the west.
China and Russia condemned the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities while European countries called for de-escalation. UN secretary-general António Guterres called it a “direct threat to international peace and security”.
Trump’s decision to join Israel’s war on Iran raises the risk of a backlash from his own supporters, many of whom want the US to stay out of global conflicts.
While most Republican lawmakers backed Trump’s decision, Representative Thomas Massie told CBS there was “no imminent threat to the United States” and Republicans were “tired of endless wars in the Middle East”.
Some Democrats also condemned the strikes, saying they risked drawing the US into another protracted war.