US President Donald Trump said Saturday night that US warplanes carried out strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran, calling the attack “successful” and saying the aircraft had departed Iranian airspace, The Washington Post newspaper reported. The strikes targeted nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” he said.
Trump said the US military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel ’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear programme 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 US comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country’s air defences and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. But US and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and a 30,000-lb. bunker buster bomb alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily-fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground.
"We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space... All planes are safely on their way home,” Trump added.
The strikes are a perilous decision for the US 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.
