Trump says U.S. has attacked Iranian nuclear sites

The Associated Press

· Posted: Jun 21, 2025 8:18 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

President Donald Trump said on Saturday evening that the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel 's effort to decapitate the country's nuclear program 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and a 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb they 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," Trump said in a post on social media. "All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home."

Trump said B-2 stealth bombers were used but did not specify which types of bombs were dropped. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation.

The strikes are a perilous decision for the U.S. 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 the U.S. out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffing at the value of American interventionism.

Trump told reporters on Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran. He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks, a timeline that seemed drawn out as the situation was evolving quickly.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the U.S. on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will "result in irreparable damage for them." And Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared that "any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region."

Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country's leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.