The news broke on Saturday evening as a sweltering heat belt settled across the central and eastern sections of the United States. A bombing strike had been launched on Iranian nuclear bunkers. US president Donald Trump would address the nation at ten o’clock that evening.
Only a few days earlier, on Wednesday, Trump had been puckish about his intentions towards Iran. “I may do. I may not do it....nobody knows what I am going to do.”
Now, the world knew. When he spoke, flanked by vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth, it was in the knowledge that militarily, the immaculately planned bombing raid on the three key Iranian nuclear targets in Natanz, Isfahan and the most critical target in Fordow had been a glittering success.
Trump, with his customary gusto, announced Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated”. The action ended the will-he-won’t-he question mark over a president who had campaigned vociferously last year on a platform which would end the Russia-Ukraine conflict and restore peace in the Middle East.
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Instead, after opening his second term by issuing vague threats to claim Greenland and seeking to re-order global trade patterns with on-again-off-again tariff sections, Trump move decisively against Iran with a series of strikes. His administration insists those actions can usher in a new set of parameters through which White House negotiators can broker peace.
But even as Secretary Hegseth emphasised the military accomplishment of the Midnight Hammer operation, which was the largest B2 spirit bomber and the second longest B2 mission ever flown, the mission raised a blizzard of new questions.
The most obvious revolves around the uncertainty over how Iran, and the 86-year old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will respond to the US act of aggression, which complements the recent series of Israeli attacks that killed key Iranian generals and nuclear scientists.
The US has warned Iran against retaliatory attacks on its bases in the region, with general Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, warning that a counter-attack, or proxy attacks, would represent “an incredibly poor choice” of response on the part of Iran.
Convincing Trump to withdraw from a deal was a diplomatic victory for Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu
Within hours, the domestic response to the attacks was sharply divided along political lines. Republican lawmakers, with the conspicuous exception of Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, uniformly praised the decisiveness and success of the operation.
Democratic representatives emphasised that the depth of damage caused by the strikes had yet to be fully determined and warned that the decision greatly escalates the risk. Connecticut representative Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, stated on Sunday that Trump “has just taken an enormous, enormous gamble. And if history matters – Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, gambles in the Middle East very rarely go the way you expect or even hope they might go.”
Perhaps the clearest indication of Trump’s intentions were contained within his public rebuke days ago of Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, when he flatly declared “she’s wrong” in relation to her March testimony that Iran was not in the process of building a nuclear weapon.
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On Friday, Gabbard contradicted her position in response to Trump’s criticism, stating on social media: “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months.”
The strikes draw renewed attention to Trump’s decision, in 2018, to withdraw from the nuclear agreement the US had entered into with Iran during president Barack Obama’s administration in 2015.
Convincing Trump to withdraw from a deal was a diplomatic victory for Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has spent decades issuing warnings to the effect that Iran is on the cusp of nuclear capability. The Israeli leader was arguably the one person more exultant about the US intervention on Saturday night.
Sceptics noted that for a full year afterwards, Iran remained in compliance with the terms of that shredded agreement. In 2020, Trump approved what was the boldest military action of his first term in office: the targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the prominent military leader. That provocation drew a limited Iranian response, with missile launches at Iraqi bases where US forces were stationed. It remains to be seen how it will respond to what stands as Trump’s boldest and riskiest foreign policy action as president.
