Trump Rejected Army's Iran Attack Plan, US Damaged Only 1 Of 3 Key Nuke Sites: Report
US President Donald Trump did not want to engage the US in a prolonged conflict in West Asia with Iran.
US President Donald Trump personally rejected a sweeping military plan to expand US strikes on Iran, broadcaster NBC News said in a new report, citing current and former officials familiar with the deliberations.
The proposal, drawn up by the US Central Command (CENTCOM), would have targeted three more nuclear sites and unfolded over several weeks. The report said that the plan stretched far beyond the limited strikes Trump eventually authorized last month.
The report highlighted that the US President wanted to be consistent with his desire to avoid prolonged foreign entanglements for the US military and is said to have pushed back on the idea.
Officials told the broadcaster that Trump was wary of dragging the US into a deeper conflict with Tehran and concerned about potential casualties on both sides.
The CENTCOM plan, dubbed the 'All-In Plan" by some officials, had envisioned a sustained offensive, but the NBC News report said Trump's instinct was to opt for a shorter, more targeted action.
The US strikes last month targeted three key nuclear enrichment sites in Iran — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.
According to two serving officials, the attack on Fordow, considered a cornerstone of Iran's nuclear ambitions, was the most significant, with US intelligence assessing that it may have set back enrichment operations there by up to two years.
Much of the Trump administration's public messaging after the strikes has zeroed in on Fordow. In a Pentagon briefing responding to early Defense Intelligence Agency assessments, which suggested Iran's nuclear program overall had been delayed by only three to six months, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine focused heavily on Fordow's impact, offering little comment on the strikes at Natanz and Isfahan.
Before the strikes, US officials were aware that Iran had hardened facilities and stockpiles of enriched uranium at Natanz and Isfahan and some likely buried too deep even for the US military's 30,000-pound GBU-57 'bunker buster" bombs, the NBC News report said. These massive bombs, which had never been used in combat until the Iran operation, were specifically designed for deeply fortified sites like Fordow, built into the side of a mountain.
However, by 2023, intelligence suggested that Iran was expanding tunnel networks at Natanz, possibly digging deeper than the GBU-57's reach. Isfahan, too, was believed to have underground tunnels. While the US deployed GBU-57s at Natanz, it opted for Tomahawk missile strikes on surface targets at Isfahan, avoiding the bunker busters there altogether.
view comments
First Published:
July 17, 2025, 20:08 IST
Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
4 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Daily Briefing: Tariffs, Pak factor and the waiting game
Good morning! Just hours before the August 1 deadline when US President Donald Trump's tariffs were to take effect, the White House announced a new set of 'adjusted' tariffs on more than 60 trading partners and the 27-member European Union. These tariffs will kick in on August 7. In his executive order, Trump said that the new tariffs are based on additional information he has received on the 'lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships', recommendations on foreign relations and national security matters, and the status of trade negotiations with some countries. The tariffs range between 10 and 40 per cent. Certain EU goods will be exempt from duties. Countries not mentioned in the new list will be charged a baseline 10 per cent tariff. For India, the rate stands at 25 per cent, as was announced a couple of days ago. Waiting game: Although the government has stated that it will study the implications of the 25 per cent tariff rate, the view in private is that India simply cannot afford to rush into a lopsided deal, an official told my colleague Anil Sasi. India has been striving to negotiate an agreement which maintains its edge over China. Notably, the July 31 order did not change the agreed-upon 30 per cent tariff on China. As of now, confusion persists on overall tariffs on India, given that Trump is yet to specify the 'penalties' for buying Russian oil. With new announcements every few days and changing US policy, such as a proposed BRICS tariff, there's a giant question mark on the sanctity of any trade deal with the American administration. Given the current status of India's negotiations with the US, any agreement will likely be signed by September or October. Pak factor: New Delhi has also factored in Trump's growing closeness to Pakistan. It's believed that Trump has not taken kindly to India's fact-checking of his claims that he brokered the ceasefire between the duelling nations. Whereas, Pakistan's outreach has included public praise, including a recommendation for a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump, and investments in the President's cryptocurrency business. Now, Trump has announced a new deal with Islamabad to develop Pakistan's oil reserves. 🎧 For more on the tariffs, tune in to today's '3 Things' podcast episode. On that note, let's get to the rest of today's edition. On September 29, 2008, a bomb went off during Ramzan in an area with a sizeable Muslim population in Malegaon, about 100 km northeast of Maharashtra's Nashik. The blast killed six people and injured nearly 100 others. On July 31, Special Judge A K Lahoti acquitted all seven accused in the case, including former BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit. The court observed that while there was 'strong suspicion' about their role in the blast, that cannot be a substitute for 'legal proof'. The investigation: The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), led by IPS officer Hemant Karkare, first probed the case. They had filed a chargesheet in 2009, naming 11 accused, claiming that the perpetrators had held several meetings across cities. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) took over the case in 2011. In its 2016 chargesheet, the NIA criticised the ATS probe, re-recording witness statements and rejecting the accused's confessions to the ATS. The trial: In court, witnesses turned hostile, especially on the point of conspiracy meetings. A crucial piece of evidence — recordings on an accused's laptop — was deemed 'unreliable'. Moreover, the court also raised doubts about the procedure adopted to record voice samples from the accused. Read all about how the case fell. 'Delhi is the national capital. And this is not how a national capital should be. Most people living here are from the labour class because things like electricity and water are free. There is nothing wrong with that. But India is a powerful country, and if its capital looks like a slum city, how are you going to project it?' Lieutenant Governor of Delhi V K Saxena said the above words at the latest edition of Expresso, where we sit down with the who's who for an all-inclusive chat. L-G Saxena was joined by former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to talk about the challenges of urbanisation, making Delhi a world-class national capital and inculcating cultural literacy in the country. Read. Pak links: India's security establishment is in the process of examining the devices — three mobile phones and two LoRa (long range) communication sets — recovered from the Pahalgam attackers killed in Operation Mahadev. Information in the devices is key to establishing the Pakistan link of the terrorists. Crucially, investigators have recovered photos of two Pakistani NADRA cards, which are national identity cards issued by the Pakistan government's National Database and Registration Authority. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)'s mass layoffs have prompted a pertinent question: In the artificial intelligence (AI) age, is the Indian IT sector still a beacon of opportunity? In today's Dis/Agree column, we asked two experts to weigh in. Srinath Sridharan, a corporate advisor and author, asserts that India's IT story is far from over. He writes that the real test is how quickly India can embed AI literacy and advanced skills across its workforce. Shashank Reddy, managing partner at Evam Law & Policy, writes that with the advent of AI, mass hirings in the tech industry may be a thing of the past. 'No longer can one sector take on the burden of upholding India's middle class and economic prospects…' That's all for today, folks! Happy weekend-ing! Sonal Gupta
Economic Times
4 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Trump calls reporter who questioned absence of tariffs in 1st term a 'lunatic'; Watch video
TIL Creatives AI generated image. US President Donald Trump publicly clashed with a reporter during a White House press conference on Thursday, calling him a 'lunatic' when questioned about the timing of his decision to invoke the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs in his second term. The exchange came hours after a federal appellate court held a 99-minute hearing examining whether Trump exceeded his legal authority under IEEPA by unilaterally introducing wide-ranging tariffs on imports. 'As you know, a federal appellate court today heard oral arguments about whether or not you had the authority to unilaterally impose those tariffs,' the reporter asked. 'I'm not going to get you to weigh in on the legal arguments, but you're weighing your decision to do that, your authority to do that, based on a 1977 law… Why didn't you invoke this law in your first term?'Trump began to answer, 'Well, we've been winning all along,' but the reporter pressed again: 'You could've collected billions upon billions of dollars back then, but instead, you waited until your second term.'Visibly agitated, Trump fired back and said, 'In my first term, I was busy fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a duly elected president.' — libsoftiktok (@libsoftiktok) He went on to defend his tariff record from his first term, saying, 'We took in hundreds of billions from China. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs.' Before concluding the exchange, he added, 'You people didn't cover it very well.'The courtroom scrutiny of Trump's legal approach comes after his April 2 'Liberation Day' tariffs, which slapped new duties on nearly all imports and invoked IEEPA for justification. The law, historically used for asset freezes and sanctions, had never been interpreted to support tariff powers.'IEEPA doesn't even mention the word 'tariffs' anywhere,' Circuit Judge Jimmie Reyna remarked, according to the Associated Press. Administration attorney Brett Schumate said, 'No president has ever read IEEPA this way,' but argued Trump acted because 'the US trade deficit posed a national emergency.' No ruling has been issued yet, but the case is expected to reach the US Supreme Court. A lower court earlier held that Trump had overstepped his authority — a decision now under in the day, Trump signed a new executive order imposing a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports, citing 'an economic emergency' due to that country's policies and the prosecution of former President Jair latest round of tariffs — covering 68 countries and the entire European Union — will take effect on August 7. Countries not specifically named will face a baseline 10% tariff. Meanwhile, India has been slapped a 25% tariff plus penalty for buying Russian crude.
NDTV
4 minutes ago
- NDTV
US Tariffs LIVE Updates: Trump's Slashes Pakistan Tariff, Shifts Deadline To August 7
Donald Trump Tariff LIVE Updates: US President Donald Trump on Friday unveiled an array of import levies that ranged as high as 41 per cent on Syria and included a hike on Canadian imports from the current 25 per cent to 35 per cent. Rates for India remained unchanged at 25 per cent, as announced by Trump earlier this week, but the duties for Pakistan have been slashed to 19 per cent, from the earlier 29 per cent. This came after Trump said the US has struck a deal with India's neighbour, Pakistan, to jointly develop its oil reserves. A range of new tariffs is due to take effect in one week, with separate sector-specific duties -- on copper -- also being implemented on trading partners. Per Trump's order, the 'universal' tariff for goods coming into the US will remain at 10 per cent, the same level that was implemented on April 2. However, that 10 per cent rate will apply only to countries with which the US has a trade surplus. Here Are Live Updates On Trump Tariffs:
