'Fordow is gone': US warplanes strike three nuclear sites in Iran
The US has carried out a "very successful attack" on three nuclear sites on Iran, President Donald Trump has said.
The strikes, which the US leader announced on social media, reportedly include a hit on the heavily-protected Fordow enrichment plant which is buried deep under a mountain.
The other sites hit were at Natanz and Isfahan. It brings the US into direct involvement in the war between Israel and Iran.
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In a posting on Truth Social, Mr Trump said, "All planes are safely on their way home" and he congratulated "our great American Warriors." He added: "Fordow is gone."
He also threatened further strikes on Iran unless it doesn't "stop immediately", adding: "Now is the time for peace."
It is not yet clear if the UK was directly involved in the attack.
Read more:Analysis: If Israel breaks Iran it will end up owning the chaos
Among the sites hit was Fordow, a secretive nuclear facility buried around 80 metres below a mountain and one of two key uranium enrichment plants in Iran.
"A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow," Mr Trump said. "Fordow is gone."
There had been a lot of discussion in recent days about possible American involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict, and much centred around the US possibly being best placed to destroy Fordow.
US media reported that .
Mr Trump said no further strikes were planned and that he hoped diplomacy would now take over.
It's not yet known what Iran's response will be - particularly as the regime was already struggling to repel Israel.
However a commentator on Iranian state TV said every US citizen or military in the region was now a legitimate target.

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Bloomberg
21 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Israel Awakes to a New Reality After US Strikes Iranian Sites
Israelis woke up to a new reality Sunday after President Donald Trump confirmed that the US bombed Iran's three main nuclear sites, diminishing a threat they've considered existential for decades. The US attack was embraced across the Israeli political spectrum, lauded on hastily assembled TV panels as a historic symbol of unprecedented US-Israeli cooperation at a time when the Jewish state has been shunned by others for its war in Gaza.


Atlantic
23 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Only Iran Hawk Is Trump
By carrying out air-strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites last night, Donald Trump showed the fundamental error of American political ornithology: There have never been Iran hawks and Iran doves. There have been only doves. Every prior U.S. president, including Trump himself, has refrained from attacking Iranian territory, even in response to killings and attempted killings of Americans, not only abroad but also on American soil. Whether this dovish approach was wise is debatable; that it was anomalous among American policies toward hostile countries is not. Imagine if Venezuela relentlessly plotted to kill Americans, in locations around the world—and tried to acquire a weapon that would safeguard its campaign of violence for generations to come. Other countries have not been so bold as Iran, and if they had been, the response might have looked like what Iran saw last night in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. At a press conference, Trump said the nuclear sites were 'completely and totally obliterated.' Also beyond debate are the results of that dovish policy, up to yesterday. Some of those results were positive. The United States and Iran were not at war, and American forces in the Middle East were not all at high alert for reprisals. But Iran had gone metastatic. It had, with impunity, set up armed proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, and Iraq, and less overt forces around the world. What other country does this? What other country does this without rebuke? The best argument against attacking Iran's nuclear program has always been that the attack will not work—that it would at best set the program back, rather than end it, and that Tehran would respond by building back better, in a deeper bunker and with greater stealth. An enrichment facility capable of producing a nuclear weapon need not be large, perhaps with the size and power needs of a Costco or two. The Obama-era nuclear deal secured unprecedented access for monitoring Iran's known nuclear sites. The demolition of those sites means that any future ones will be unmonitored, remaining a secret from outsiders for years, like China's was. Think of the cavernous chemistry lab built below the laundry-processing plant in Breaking Bad, but churning out uranium-235, not blue meth. If any other country is thinking about going nuclear, it will learn the lesson of last night and start with the Breaking Bad approach, or better yet scrap its plans completely. From the perspective of nonproliferation, Trump's strikes could be good news, in the obvious sense that countries that desire nuclear weapons now have more reason to think their centrifuges will be destroyed before they produce enough material for a bomb. Up to now, most countries that have persevered have eventually succeeded in going nuclear. The most notable counterexamples were Iraq, whose so-called 'nuclear mujahedin' (as Saddam Hussein later called them) had their enrichment plant at Osirak bombed by Israel in 1981; and Syria, which built a secret plutonium-producing nuclear reactor only to have it destroyed, again by Israel, in 2007. If the strikes last night worked (and it is far too early for anyone, including Trump, to say), Iran will join the small club of nations whose nuclear ambitions have been thwarted by force. 'There will be either peace,' Trump said at his press conference last night, 'or far greater tragedy for Iran.' What might peace and its alternatives look like? Trump did not say, as the Iran dove George W. Bush might have, that peace is conditional on the overthrow of Iran's theocracy. Trump has always seemed open to Iran's continued rule by any authoritarian or scumbag or religious nut who is willing to keep to himself and maybe allow the Trump family to open a hotel someday. So peace could conceivably still take many forms, some of which will disappoint Iranian democrats and secularists. The alternative to peace, which Trump promises will draw such a tragic reply, can take both immediate and longer-term forms. The immediate form is continued Iranian strikes against Israel and the expansion of those attacks to include U.S. bases in the region. (The logic of international law, for what little it is worth, would seem to permit retaliation against military targets—but not hospitals, apartment buildings, or other civilian infrastructure—of both Israel and the United States.) It would at this point be foolhardy for Iran to increase such attacks, rather than ending them or tapering them off. But no one familiar with Iran's history would expect it to limit its reply to conventional strikes, or to prefer them to the irregular forms of attack that it has practiced avidly for more than 40 years. A barrage of ballistic missiles, the regime understands, may invite a tragedy for Iran. But what about the mysterious disappearance of an American from the streets of Dubai, Bahrain, or Prague? Or the blowing up of a hostel full of Israelis in Bangkok? Or cutting the brakes of some American or Israeli diplomat's car in Baku? Small acts of harassment, such as these, force Iran's enemies to make hard choices about how to retaliate. The difficulty of those choices are part of the reason for past presidents' consistent reluctance to attack Iran. Do you attack Iran after the death of one U.S. Marine? How about two? How much proof of Iranian involvement in a diplomat's car crash will it take to trigger a renewed state of war? Iran's history suggests that under normal circumstances, it knows the level of provocation that will keep an American president from responding with direct force. Its estimations seem to have failed it for Trump (and Benjamin Netanyahu), but in the past and in the future, one can expect that it will, like a niggling spouse from hell, know the precise limits of its adversaries' patience. The point of the prolonged pressure, staying a smidge under the threshold of renewed hostility, is to drive Iran's adversaries mad, to tire them out, and to convince them to leave the region out of sheer stress and weariness. Ironically Trump's foreign policy is, or was until yesterday, proof that this strategy is effective. Trump came to power as an isolationist in trade and a bring 'em home skeptic of U.S. military action abroad. In his first term he fired John Bolton, a tireless advocate of regime change. In his second he appointed Tulsi Gabbard, high priestess of weary isolationism, as a top adviser. Trump said that he would escalate American attacks 'if peace does not come quickly.' It is possible that peace will come quickly, and Iran's government will survive in humiliated form. It is also possible, under those circumstances, that the peace that comes quickly will again be illusory, and Iran will revert to tactics short of war, so it can wait out Trump's term, and let another dove take his place. In that case, the Middle East and beyond will be a scarier place to be an American than it was a few days ago.


Washington Post
25 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Nations react to US strikes on Iran with calls for diplomacy
The U.S. strike on Iran fueled fears that Israel's war with Tehran could escalate to a wider regional conflict, and other countries began reacting Sunday with calls for diplomacy and words of caution. President Donald Trump had said Thursday that he would decide within two weeks whether to get involved. In the end, it took just days to decide, and Washington inserted itself into Israel's campaign with its early Sunday attack. It remained unclear early how much damage had been inflicted, but Iran had pledged to retaliate if the U.S. joined the Israeli assault. Some have questioned whether a weakened Iran would capitulate or remain defiant and begin striking with allies at U.S. targets scattered across the Gulf region. Here is a look at reaction from governments and officials around the world. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was 'gravely alarmed' by the use of force by the United States. 'There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control – with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,' he said in a statement on the social media platform X. 'I call on Member States to de-escalate.' 'There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy.' New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters urged 'all parties to return to talks.' He wouldn't tell reporters Sunday whether New Zealand supported President Trump's actions, saying they had only just happened. The three-time foreign minister said the crisis is 'the most serious I've ever dealt with' and that 'critical further escalation is avoided.' 'Diplomacy will deliver a more enduring resolution than further military action,' he said. A flash commentary from China's government-run media asked whether the U.S. is repeating 'its Iraq mistake in Iran.' The online piece by CGTN, the foreign-language arm of the state broadcaster, said the U.S. strikes mark a dangerous turning point. 'History has repeatedly shown that military interventions in the Middle East often produce unintended consequences, including prolonged conflicts and regional destabilization,' it said, citing the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. It said a measured, diplomatic approach that prioritizes dialogue over military confrontation offers the best hope for stability in the Middle East. Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is expected to hold a meeting with key ministers Sunday afternoon to discuss the impact from the U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to Japan's NHK television. Japan's largest-circulation newspaper Yomiuri is distributing an extra edition on the attack in Tokyo. South Korea's presidential office said it would hold an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the security and economic ramifications of the U.S. strikes and potential South Korean responses. Australia, which shuttered its embassy in Tehran and evacuated staff Friday, continued to push for a diplomatic end to the conflict. 'We have been clear that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program has been a threat to international peace and security,' a government official said in a written statement. 'We note the U.S. President's statement that now is the time for peace.' 'The security situation in the region is highly volatile. We continue to call for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.'