Stealth bombers' 37-hour mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear fortress
The order was given just before 7pm in Washington to drop the heaviest conventional bombs ever used in combat.
A fleet of B-2 bombers had been airborne for nearly 37 hours, having taken off from the Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on Friday and refuelled several times mid-air.
As the bombers – their advanced stealth capacity making them virtually invisible to Iranian radar – closed in on their targets, guided-missile submarines from the US Navy also moved into position. Somewhere in the Arabian Sea, a fleet of converted Ohio-class vessels, each capable of carrying up to 154 warheads, stood ready.
Everything now awaited the final order from the commander-in-chief.
Donald Trump had been here before. In 2019, the US military was 'cocked and loaded' to strike Iran. Bombers were in the air, missiles on US warships locked onto their targets.
Then, with 10 minutes to spare, the president called it off – an unprecedented, very public reversal of a major military operation.
This time, there was no such hesitation, at least visible to the public. The dial of history turned.
Mr Trump, often more cautious on foreign policy matters than his bluster suggested, had just made the biggest gamble of his presidency – one that may yet come to define it.
If he has made the right call, he may just have exorcised the Iranian nuclear spectre that has haunted Israel and the Sunni Arab states of the Middle East for decades. If wrong, the decision could plunge the region into violent and prolonged turmoil, mire the United States into the kind of 'forever war' he once campaigned against and cause a rupture with his most fervent domestic supporters.
Little wonder tension was etched on the faces of those gathered in the White House's Situation Room, where Mr Trump had convened his military commanders and closest political allies – minus Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, reportedly ostracised after suggesting Iran was 'not building a nuclear weapon.'
The departure of the stealth bombers had not gone unnoticed. Independent analysts tracking their flight paths suggested they were heading to the US base on the soon-to-be Mauritian territory of Diego Garcia – a staging post, perhaps, for a future attack. Just 24 hours earlier, Mr Trump had declared a fortnight's pause in direct US involvement in Israel's war with Iran.
That, it turned out, was a feint, and the apparent Diego Garcia stopover may have been a decoy.
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