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Strikes on Iranian nuclear sites thrust US into escalating Middle East conflict

Kevin Liptak

CNN: The United States decisively entered into conflict with Iran on Saturday after President Donald Trump ordered US warplanes to drop massive bombs on three nuclear sites inside the country, thrusting him squarely into an escalating Middle East conflict even as he holds out hope the matter can be resolved diplomatically.

In social media posts and during a late-night address from the White House, Trump described the bombings as entirely successful and warned Iran against retaliation.

“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Trump said during his four-minute speech from the White House Cross Hall.

He described the mission as a “spectacular military success” and called on Iran to immediately return to diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. He said the sites had been “totally obliterated.”

“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Trump said, flanked by his vice president, secretary of state and defense secretary. “If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

The US strikes on the Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump identified earlier as Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, significantly ratchet up tensions in the country, and amounts to one of the most consequential choices of Trump’s young second presidency. The debate over whether to target Iran directly had divided Trump’s political coalition, with concerns high among some members of the Republican base that intervening could drag the US into a new, prolonged conflict.

The US used six B-2 bombers to drop a dozen “bunker buster” bombs on the Fordow nuclear site, a US official told CNN. Trump said in a message on social media that “a full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow.”

“There is not another military in the World that could have done this,” Trump wrote. “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”

The bombs used in the strikes were GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as a “bunker busters,” two sources familiar with the operation said. Experts have highlighted them as the only type of bomb potentially capable of destroying Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility.

The MOP — a 30,000-pound bomb with 6,000 pounds of explosives — was designed for “reaching and destroying our adversaries’ weapons of mass destruction located in well-protected facilities,” according to a fact sheet from the US Air Force. Saturday is the first known instance of the bomb being used operationally.

The move to target the Fordow facility in particular, which successive US presidents had considered but ultimately decided against, will now insert Trump directly into a growing crisis that he had once hoped to defuse through diplomacy >>>