{"id":310912,"date":"2025-06-22T07:30:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T07:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=310912"},"modified":"2025-06-23T07:59:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T07:59:37","slug":"donald-trump-says-us-has-attacked-three-iranian-nuclear-sites-and-totally-obliterated-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=310912","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump says US has attacked three Iranian nuclear sites and \u2018totally obliterated\u2019 them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Roth and William Christou \u2013 The Guardian June 22, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Donald Trump has announced that the US had bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, directly joining Israel\u2019s effort to destroy the country\u2019s nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran\u2019s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur objective was the destruction of Iran\u2019s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world\u2019s number one state sponsor of terror,\u201d Trump said in a speech from the White House. \u201cTonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran\u2019s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strikes on Saturday night hit uranium enrichment sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan<\/a>, Trump said. He warned Iran away from retaliating against US targets in the region, promising that further US strikes would be even more deadly.<\/p>\n

Iran launched around 20 ballistic missiles at Israel on Sunday morning, triggering country-wide air raid sirens and injuring 16 people<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,\u201d Trump said. \u201cRemember, there are many targets left. Tonight\u2019s was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hailed the strikes. \u201cCongratulations, President Trump, your bold decision to target Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history,\u201d Netanyahu said in a video statement.<\/p>\n

In his remarks, Trump also said that he and Netanyahu had \u201cworked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we\u2019ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking again after Trump\u2019s speech, Netanyahu said his promise to destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities had been \u201cfulfilled\u201d following the US strikes.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said his country reserves all options to defend itself and said the attacks were \u201coutrageous and will have everlasting consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n

Later, Iran\u2019s foreign ministry said in a statement that the country is \u201cresolved to defend Iran\u2019s territory, sovereignty, security and people by all force and means against the United States\u2019 criminal aggression.\u201d It further called on the UN security council to convey an emergency meeting.<\/p>\n

Soon after the foreign minister\u2019s statement, Iran launched its missile barrage at Israel, the projectiles landing in ten sites across central and north Israel. A large plume of smoke was seen rising from Haifa after the attacks and footage showed paramedics at the foot of a bombed-out apartment building near Tel Aviv.<\/p>\n

Previously, Iranian officials said that any US involvement<\/a> would trigger an attack on US military bases in the Middle East, which host thousands of US troops across at least 8 countries.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the US on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will \u201cresult in irreparable damage for them\u201d.<\/p>\n

It was unclear if an Iranian response would include its network of proxies across the Middle east, militias such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. On Saturday, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree pledged to attack US ships and warships in the Red Sea if the US intervenes in Iran, despite a May ceasefire between the US and the Yemeni militia.<\/p>\n

Following Iran\u2019s barrage of missiles, Israeli warplanes began strikes in western Iran, hitting missile launchers and Iranian soldiers, the Israeli military said.<\/p>\n

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said in an interview on Sunday that Israel should finish its war in Iran, saying that its \u201cmain objectives had been achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Iran, media played down the US strikes, with the state-run IRNA news agency early on Sunday acknowledging an attack on the country\u2019s Fordow nuclear site, but saying it was evacuated beforehand. The semiofficial Fars news agency, also close to the Revolutionary Guard, quoted another official saying air defences opened fire near Isfahan and explosions had been heard.<\/p>\n

Later, Iran\u2019s atomic agency said that the country will carry on with its nuclear activities despite the US attacks on key facilities. Iranian member of parliament Mohammad Manan Raisi, representing the city of Qom where Fordow is located, said that the damage to the nuclear facility was not major but \u201conly on the ground, which can be restored.\u201d
\n<\/strong>
\nThe International Atomic Energy Agency also said that following the attacks on the three nuclear site, there was \u201cno increase in off-site radiation levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision to directly involve the US comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran<\/a> that have moved to systematically eradicate the country\u2019s air defences and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities.<\/p>\n

US and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and a 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground at Fordow.<\/p>\n

Top Republicans supported Trump\u2019s decision to launch strikes against Iran. \u201cThe military operations in Iran should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says,\u201d said the House speaker, Mike Johnson, in a post on X. \u201cThe President gave Iran\u2019s leader every opportunity to make a deal, but Iran refused to commit to a nuclear disarmament agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel launched the attacks on Iran saying that it wanted to remove any chance of Tehran developing nuclear weapons. Iran has argued that its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters on Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran. He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks, a timeline that seemed drawn out as the situation was evolving quickly.<\/p>\n

Trump spoke to Reuters in a brief phone interview on Saturday, saying Iran should \u201cmake peace immediately. Otherwise they\u2019ll get hit again.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to two White House officials, Trump and Netanyahu, spoke after the US conducted strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.<\/p>\n

Prominent members of the Trump administration<\/a> had also professed opposition to a US intervention in Iran, although they appeared to have been outmanoeuvred by hawks who convinced Trump to go forward with the strike.<\/p>\n

JD Vance in a call with senior Israeli officials on Saturday said that the United States should not be directly involved and that Israel was going to drag the US into the war, Reuters reported. Publicly, the vice-president has limited his criticism of the potential for a US strike against Iran.<\/p>\n

The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had also voiced skepticism that Iran was seeking to make a nuclear weapon, and current and former senior Pentagon officials are also said to be strongly opposed to the strikes.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. joins Israel\u2019s war against Iran by bombing three key nuclear sites in what President Trump describes as a \u201cspectacular military success\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":310914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-Iran"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=310912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310913,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310912\/revisions\/310913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/310914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=310912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=310912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=310912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}