Heeding the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump dispatched U.S. warplanes to bomb Iran.
American warplanes bombed three nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday night, bringing the U.S. military directly into Israel’s war with Iran. “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE,” President Donald Trump incongruously wrote in a social media post announcing the attacks.
Trump campaigned on ending foreign wars during his 2024 presidential run and has cast himself as a “peacemaker.” In his second inaugural address, he pledged to “measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” Trump also regularly claims to have opposed the Iraq War from its outset. (He actually supported it.)
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial. “All planes are now outside of Iran airspace. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.”
The aim of the attacks, American and Israeli officials have said, is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. intelligence community says that threat is not, however, real.
“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” reads the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment published in March. The assessment serves as the intelligence community’s official evaluation of threats to “the Homeland,” U.S. citizens, and the country’s interests. Trump dismissed those and more recent assessments to the same effect.
Defense experts who spoke with The Intercept warned the United States might be entering into a new round of the forever wars.
“Between enabling Israel in Gaza and all of its operations across the Middle East, and now these strikes in Iran, we are setting the foundation for the next generation’s ‘War on Terror,’” said Wes Bryant, who served until earlier this year as the senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.
He questioned the Trump administration’s abrupt shift from negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program to bombing it.
The idea of an “imminent Iran nuclear threat” wasn’t serious a few days ago, Bryant said. “The fact that suddenly Trump was pulled into this reactive major strike against Iran under the auspices of nuclear deterrence is, I think, among the most disturbing red flags of this administration thus far.”
“Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear targets is a short-sighted one that will not achieve his stated objectives, brings significant risks to the United States, and could derail his foreign policy priorities,” said Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy. “To strike Iran while diplomacy was ongoing undermines his push for peace elsewhere including with Putin. Why would Russia or any other country negotiate with Trump going forward?”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his military’s objective was to “strike all” of Iran’s nuclear facilities. He had been pressing Trump to augment Israel’s attacks with weaponry his country does not possess — namely the 30,000-pound GBU-57s, known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators or “bunker buster” bombs, that Israel says can destroy Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment facility in Fordow.
Former defense officials speculated that these weapons — which are so heavy they can only be carried by U.S. B-2 bombers — were used on Israel’s behalf during the Saturday attacks.
If Iranian leaders respond to the U.S. strikes with a major counterattack, such as striking American military bases across the Middle East, it could set off an escalatory spiral and even more aggressive U.S. involvement.
“There is also very little chance Iran will negotiate now because Trump has no way to provide them credible assurances that if they come to the table, they will be spared future attacks,” Kavanagh said. “Trump has sacrificed significant diplomatic leverage for narrow military gains of uncertain duration, and in doing so, has put the United States at risk of another costly Middle East war that will further diminish U.S. global influence and American prosperity.”
More than 40,000 U.S. active-duty military personnel and civilians working for the Pentagon are deployed across the Middle East. U.S. troops in the region have come under attack close to 400 times, at a minimum, since October 2023 in response to the U.S.-supported Israeli war on Gaza. Predominantly led by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian-allied Houthi government in Yemen, the strikes include a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and ballistic missiles fired at fixed bases and U.S. warships across the region.
Trump struck a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in May. Prior to the U.S. attacks on Iran, the Houthis threatened to again target U.S. ships in the Red Sea if Washington joined Israel’s attacks on Iran.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has expressed his desires for regime change in Iran and not ruled out targeting the country’s supreme leader, saying “no one in Iran should have immunity.” Israel’s defense minister said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot “continue to exist.” Trump joined in on the threats, pointing out that the U.S. knows Khamenei’s location and dangled the possibility of assassinating him in the future.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this week, before Saturday’s strikes.
“Military force, by itself, is seldom effective in orchestrating regime change,” Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general who headed both Special Operations Command and Central Command, which oversees U.S. military efforts in the Middle East, told The Intercept before the U.S. began its attacks on Saturday.
“There will be ramifications against the U.S. and this should be discussed and addressed in detail,” Votel warned. “There is no clean course we can take in this situation.”
by Nick Turse