Around midnight, Saturday, June 21, Trump administration-authorized airstrikes began on three nuclear sites in Iran, at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz, based on the administration’s claim there is imminent danger of the Iranian government possessing nuclear weapons. This was despite the testimony by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Telsi Gabbard on March 25 that Iran is no longer building nuclear weapons since they halted in 2023.
After pushback from Trump on Friday, Gabbard qualified her statement on the social media platform X, “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a press conference Sunday morning that after the military operation dubbed, “Operation Midnight Hammer” that Iran’s nuclear capabilities “have been obliterated.” The sites sustained “severe damage and destruction” according to Air Force General Dan Caine. Some of the B2 Spirit bombers flew from Missouri to Iran.
The Bush administration claims in the early 2000s that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was used as justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and a protracted conflict until 2011, but was later found to be unsubstantiated. Bush was authorized by Congress to use military force against Iraq. Congress has not authorized that the Trump administration use military force against Iran.
In the Sunday morning press conference, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth said, “Now is the time to come forward with peace”; however, he also asserted that the U.S. will act quickly when the U.S. and its allies, such as Israel, are under threat.